Ahhh, they're finally back with a full-length of fucking awesome rock that's heavy, but also catchy and memorable, with unique vocals that sort of shout in key and lean towards singing at times. The majority of the songs are longer this time out, and though similar the writing is a bit more diverse. There are still tons of thick chords and driving rhythms with melodic tinges, but just check out the energy and creative dissonance used in tracks like "Runaway Crying" to see what this band is truly capable of. "Bloodworms and Cigarettes" is slower and a bit darker than the other songs with a healthy dose of vocal layering, and "Who Keeps Stealing the Bricks" uses some really unique chords that are sort of disharmonic - in this case the sound of the pick scraping the strings adds an even more interesting texture. "Lost and Found" starts with a semi-distorted arpeggio under some spacey delay, driven largely by the rhythm section and vocals, but during the more intense moments there are some layers of sustained feedback that sound really fucking awesome as well. This is also the longest track, running damn near six minutes, but they certainly keep the momentum going full force for the song's duration. Once again the recording these guys have laid down smokes the shit out of most anything I've heard lately. The drums are huge and natural, the bass tone plays a good role, the guitars are heavy and excellently textured with a good amount of lower midrange grit, and the vocals sound perfect. This is how all rock bands of this nature should sound, god damnit. Fucking perfect. I haven't a gripe with even one minute aspect of their sound. Excellent. There's also a CD-Rom video that's pretty amusing. It's shot in black and white and basically details a bunch of people listening to, hating, and throwing away a Jesuseater CD... until it ends up in the hands of a bunch of tattooed girls in their underwear, who proceed to have a pillowfight with Jesuseater as the soundtrack. Then there's some live footage (with studio audio) of the band "performing" to a crowd of 99.9% tattooed girls. Go figure. The layout looks pretty cool, as with all Deathwish releases. The color scheme is consistent throughout, using a lot of dirty, worn, faded looking colors and textures over the band photos and the imagery. The illustrations and lettering are all sort of like old circus posters or something, and the booklet is thick as hell because everything is very spaced out, placing only one set of lyrics per every two pages (if that). The lyrics are pretty obscure, not so much in presentation or delivery, but in actual content/message. "Sometimes I think about suicide, In a drink, in a pill, Forget my dreams, Forget the names, It's the games we play that keep us apart, Staring at the ceiling, Try not to care, Sick in the mouth and sick in the head, I can't complain." This is a damn fine piece of work. I expect to be spinning this quite a bit in the future, and I would indeed recommend checking this out if you're down for some non-generic, rather inventive rock.
[Deathwish Inc.]
Running time - 36:23, Tracks: 10
[Notable tracks: Disappearing Twins, Runaway Crying, Who Keeps Stealing the Bricks, Lost and Found]
Deathwish Inc. - http://www.deathwishinc.com
