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MEET.JOHN.DOE
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"We're not paranoid - just a little unsure..."  This
EP is a welcome word in your ear for the new year. But a word with the
necessary force of bellowing over the blanket of apathy that's as cloying
and hard to discern as the polluted crack-ed up cities,splintering small towns, a paranoid populace unprotected against increased crime and preening politicians alike and reared on reality TV mind reduction that cloak us like a jet-engined force field. And not before time. Scrap metal shearing intelligence, collapsing corrugated roofs from tin shacks in deserted local playing fields used more for chasing dragons than chasing dreams and picking up pieces to construct a ruin that resembles all they see around them. But in running with the torch that just about still flickers from where old Joe strummed his last, delivering a scathing riposte at the rotten back alley we've landed in after a decade long dead-end dalliance with new labour they're gonna righten the ruination as they go along. This is the monumental morning march out of the quagmire of the dreams before. Not to say it's political sloganeering, empty eye-catching errant eloquisms...not at all...The frightening claustrophobia of lyrics such as 'There's kids in hoods / with pocket-knives / they want my phone' and 'What else do they know? / Where is it we're going?' set against music that shuttles from gentle dreamscape anthemics to rigid, paralyzing pneumatic punches that haul you up like an unelasticated bungee jump, on again into subtle astral space drones by the end of 'The.Grip', a kind of beautiful anger of broiling molten metal flowing and occasionally out of the swirl comes a solid blast that'll be used as a buffer for the future...righteous and intense as all the greatest punk idealogues were (eh? ARE!) be that Jello, Henry Rollins or the Cro-Mags. Ultimately it still rests on the music of course and their impassioned firestorm at last heralds some alt-metal rage rock to have a bit of faith in. Ultimately it's music, man, and this is a more than satisfying slap in the face to all this nu (neutered) metal. Not for these chaps the juvenile posturings offering offence for a fee, nor flailing in 'feel for me' emo shite. A considered and concise discourse on modern dilemmas and debacles, with the hearty hope of at least, youth, if not hardcore itself. "He's afraid of the future / the future's right now" ________________________________________________________ |
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-Stu Gibson |