Review Summary: Szalenstwo artystychnych ambicji.
Overhype is the enemy. There are several YouTube celebs that I will avoid for the rest of my life, despite them clearly being chill and down-to-earth dudes, just because I had an obsessive friend who would buzz into my ears about their content, their habits and tastes, the color of their socks etcetera, etcetera, day after day, ad nauseam. However, overhype by endless repetition is not the only way. Sometimes, even a few lines of text are enough to make you skeptical, especially if the hyping is done by the artist themselves. Naturally, I needed some context about Self Spiller, if I wanted to review their album, so I’ve read their Bandcamp description before listening. In hindsight, I almost wish I hadn’t.
It does contain some useful information, though. You can learn that Self Spiller is a project of Agalloch bassist Jason Walton that features a team of 14 musicians overall, most notably two members of acclaimed Japanese avant-garde band Sigh. You also learn that it took Walton six years to piece together contributions of individual musicians into a coherent album. Sounds interesting, right? More so, the project has truly Napoleonic ambitions, as it aspires to achieve the sound that merges “California” by Mr. Bungle and “La Masquerade Infernale” by Arcturus. Quite a big statement, huh?
For me, bold claims like this were somewhat detrimental in terms of the enjoyment of the record. The band had some big shoes to fill, and did they manage to do that? Well, they have certainly tried. After a nondescript intro, the first proper song starts with a catchy guitar riff and dreamy singing, which sets the tone nicely for the album, but gets abandoned quite abruptly. After a short transition, the song erupts into a chaotic mixture featuring midi-style guitars and drumming, samples of cats’ meowing, and a spoken word section. Walton certainly makes a lot of effort to sound weird, which is a good thing in itself, but in this particular case, that weirdness often feels forced and contrived to me. Weirdness for the sake of weirdness, so to speak. One other issue is related to the deliberately stitched-up nature of the album. The same Bandcamp description tells us that all musicians involved worked independently from each other in their home studios and composed their parts without knowing what their counterparts were doing. Which is certainly an interesting approach, but it also means that whenever a particularly enjoyable section of a song starts, you can be sure that it will not last long, soon to be replaced by something that sounds completely different.
“Okay, stop with all the grumpy uncle bull***,” you might say at this point. “Do you actually like the songs?” As a matter of fact, I do. My favorite is probably “I Spit in the Stomach of Zombies,” which has some very nice and clear vibes of BTBAM at their most playful and goofiest. But I’ve found something to enjoy in every song, like that unfortunately very brief saxophone and guitar interaction or the heavy growled part towards the end of “Folds of Skin to Lay.” Or, the atmospheric intro to “Like Three Asps.” Or, the sheer swagger of “Therefore I Worship.” One puzzling song is “Rot on Root.” It prominently features a very nice violin melody, which sounds maybe not identical, but very similar to the one used in the song “Believe Me” by Fort Minor, Mike Shinoda’s hip-hop project. I know that the one Shinoda used is a loop from Apple’s GarageBand software. I don’t know the origin of “Rot on Root” melody, but it certainly made me scratch my head until I figured out the source of familiarity. Self Spiller do expand on the melody, though, whereas Fort Minor just used the loop as is.
Anyway, that’s just a curiosity. What matters is that Walton and co clearly set out to make a stellar album, but ended up with just a good one. I am no stranger to the avant-garde side of metal and really enjoy Mr. Bungle, Dog Fashion Disco, and a slew of other frantic and creative bands. The downside to this is that it’s rather hard to surprise or impress me at this point. However, if you do need to scratch that “California” itch, “Worms in the Keys” will serve quite nicely. There is something for everyone!
*The summary is in Polish, and it means “Frenzy of artistic ambitions” or something like that.
**On Self Spiller’s Bandcamp page, the album is sold for 22 USD. That, however, is the price for the digital and vinyl versions of the album combined; they’ve just run out of stock for vinyl. If you want to buy the digital version only, you can go to Jason Walton’s Bandcamp where the same album costs 7 dollars. I am mentioning this because the fact that an album of seven full songs and one intro is sold for 22 dollars drove me a bit crazy initially, and, I’m afraid, screwed up my perception of the band somewhat before I figured out the details.
