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Being a reviewer occasionally affords me
the opportunity to pull out a soapbox, and give a short lecture,
hopefully giving the illusion that I at least have some clue
as to what I'm talking about. Music today has become about marketing,
as has everything else. Anything you can't actually sell in today's
world, you can stamp a Nike logo on and use for advertising.
A band today can come out with the 90's equivalent of the Fifth
Symphony or Abbey Road, but if some marketing director can't
see an immediate demographic that it appeals to (that will snap
up 1,000,000 copies of the album), the band most likely won't
get signed.
"Drown," who has just released
their sophomore effort, "Product of a Two- Faced World,"
is one of those bands that doesn't have an immediately visible
demographic. They have successfully incorporated elements of
both metal and industrial music into their sound, and they are
probably one of the best bands today playing hardcore, underground
music. However, very few hardcore bands achieve the multi-platinum
sales that record companies look for in their artists, and it
has taken Drown four years since their major label debut on Elektra
to find another major label willing to take a chance on their
music.
With that aside, "Drown" has
recently released "Product of a Two Faced World" on
Slipdisc records, and it is definitely worth the wait. This is
an album fueled with anger and intensity and it is apparent that
the problems that the band has faced during the last four years
have served as a focal point for both their lyrics and their
sound.
The album begins with the hard-driving
"You Never Listened." This energetic marriage of metal
and industrial sensibilities is a good intro to the assault on
the listener's senses that the album as a whole brings. The next
track, the equally heavy "The Day I Walked Away," is
an unflinching look at those who turn a blind eye to individual
suffering. Guitarist Patrick Sprawl seems to be drawing from
an inexhaustible energy source when he plays, and the energy
level the entire band reaches is pretty impressive.
On the track "1605 (for my suffering),"
the band actually throws in a bit of a hip-hop sound, at least
vocally, as they create a track somewhat reminiscent of Biohazard.
They follow this with the riff-heavy "Kerosene," in
which lead singer Lauren explores the way boredom can make someone
crazy. As far as Lauren's vocals go, he'll never win any singing
awards, but his vocals are well-suited to this particular type
of music, and he can go from vocal- chord tearing yelling to
soft, almost pensive, singing in the same bar of music. At times,
his voice is reminiscent of Metallica's James Hetfield before
the latter became mainstream.
The industrial beats are back on "Tired
Of Living Like This." Bass player Sean E. Demott, and drummer
Marco Forcone, shine on tracks like this where the beat is the
driving point of the music. Sonic experimentation and a funky
bass line highlight the softer, more introspective "Alone
in a Dirty World." This song, as much as any song, captures
the spirit of disillusionment of both the band and the audience
that would appreciate the "realness" of this type of
music.
The band cranks up the energy again with
the paranoiac musings of "Redial." It captures the
sense of being judged that most people who have felt outcast
sense from everyone they come into contact with, and also the
typical response: to just not care anymore what anyone else thinks.
This segues into the moving "My Private War," which
explores the internal conflicts that the songwriter is going
through. This album as a whole is as much about dealing with
pain by exposing it, as anything else, and this song illustrates
that.
There are other strong tracks on this album
(all of them in fact, in my humble opinion) but lest this go
from review length to term-paper length, I won't touch on them.
However, this is a tour-de-force as far as underground music
goes, and I can only hope that more people are exposed to this
band's obvious talent. This is an album I will enjoy for many
months to come, and I can't wait for the opportunity to see if
the energy level this band produces live matches the energy level
on this album.
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