We review one of metals odder bands, iwrestledabearonce and their new effort ‘Hail Mary‘.
[tracklist]
01. Gift Of Death
02. Remain Calm
03. Green Eyes
04. Erase It All [feat. Eddie Hermida]
05. Curse The Spot
06. Doomed To Fail, Pt. 1
07. Doomed To Fail, Pt. 2
08. Killed To Death
09. Trips
10. Man Of Virtue
11. Carbon Copy
12. Wade In The Water
13. We All Float Down Here
14. Your God Is Too Small
[/tracklist]
[details]
[length]44:45[/length]
[record_label]Artery[/record_label]
[release_date]June 16th, 2015[/release_date]
[/details]
It has taken a special kind of person to tolerate iwrestledabearonce. They have released albums that have completely ripped open the conventional definitions of metal subgenres, and have prided themselves on crafting tracks that meld together different genres in 4-minute pieces. Of course when bands like this exist, metal fans get divided to the absolute love or burning hate sectors with none ever sitting on the boundary. With previous efforts the band have gotten brilliant, and downright annoying at times, something which they seem to love doing, but one thing has remained consistent about iwrestledabearonce that has seemed to keep them alive – their odd sense of humour blended and reflected into their music. Old tracks like ‘Tastes Like Kevin Bacon‘ and ‘You Know That ‘Aint Them Dogs Real Voices‘ are examples of this. So here we are with the 4th album, ‘Hail Mary‘, let’s see how this one holds up…
The album opens with a track that would peak quite a bit of interest from any mathcore, avantgarde or experimental metal fan. A lot of technicality and interesting use of sound in ‘Gift of Death‘, including clinically precise blast beats spread out at odd moments in the song, 8-string crunching and harmonic speed shredding with creepy doll vocals thrown in the mix. Sounds like ‘Hail Mary‘ could be the winner the band are looking for right?
Well, don’t get too excited. The album takes an unfortunate turn at the introduction of the second track ‘Remain Calm‘, serving as more or less the epitome of the entire album. A lot of fiddling around on the guitar seemingly trying to bluff technicality, and jerking the whammy bar as if it were trying to revive something flaccid.
Simply put we just have no idea what the band are trying to do here – there seems to be very little change in notes in the rhythm section with the instruments not going past the second fret on the top 2 strings, and there seems to be no reasoning behind the music. ‘Hail Mary‘ does not seem to be a work of passion and it’s far too messy to work live – the band have seemingly abandoned everything that made them unique in the first place, with genre-blending keyboards being almost completely absent as well as that sense of musical humour that was their only fallback to conventional metal fans. Tracks like ‘Erase It All‘ and ‘Man of Virtue‘ truly represent this desertion.
While some moments are fairly impressive such as the technical guitar work in ‘Trips‘, and the erratic drumming in ‘We All Float Down Here‘, the undefined structuring of these tracks in general make the album lose the lustre and appeal of what albums like ‘It’s All Happening‘ had. ‘Hail Mary‘ seems to be an attempt to copy the style of Psyopus, but what they get is a stern warning that they should probably return to the focus of genre-melding and humorous attempts to break boundaries. The album will get some credit from mathcore fans, but it’s simply too noisy and too messy to warrant a decent release.
[verdict]No[/verdict]
[why]What starts as interesting ultimately turns into a cluster bomb of noise. With no structure or reasoning to the music, it’s not enough to validate interest from avantgarde or experimental metal fans.[/why]
