Review: Sea of Thousand “The Church of Total Collapse” CD

This band features former members of Employer, Employee and Dragbody, but the result sounds nothing like either of those bands, and is, in fact, nothing like most of what's out there right now. Their style is basically sludgy hardcore/rock 'n' roll with moderate tempos and a good amount of frantic dissonance, and I really love the hoarse screaming vocals (the layering in of higher snarls and lower growls is also cool). The songwriting is really strange though, shifting from quirky rocked out riffs to chord progressions that sound like Black Sabbath being covered by Black Flag if Black Flag were a weird math rock band or something. But sadly, the recording fucking sucks and destroys what power these songs would otherwise possess. Everything just sounds flat and powerless. The guitars are hard panned and lack cohesion with one another (though there is admittedly a lot of cool dual guitar interaction happening), not to mention the fact that the guitar tone is a weird and muddy mess. Then the bass is barely audible, the drums are distant and lack force, the vocals are distant and lack force... everything sounds off. There's no brightness to the mix, the levels are unbalanced, the tones are too raw... it just doesn't harness any of the qualities it needs to properly deliver the songs. The lead vocals are the only element that retain enough of their character to remain effective. Now, not all of the songs are great or anything, but there are a lot of cool things happening, and I like the band's originality a lot. "Franklin" picks up the energy level at times and has a nice rocked out edge happening, but then "Marching on its Stomach" tops five minutes with distant vocals underneath delay effects and crackling clean guitar lines eventually building into more openly sludgy runs. The title track breaks into some winding riffs that sort of carry more of that thick math rock angle, and is one of the more memorable tracks as well (perhaps in its consistency of approach). Closer "Rendered Immobile in Psychological Debris" is another longer track, but this one takes a straightforward stoner rock approach - only fucking with the time signatures and some vocal variation to change things up a bit. The layout looks really good and uses a consistent appearance with lots of dirty textures and highly abstracted imagery alongside strange lyrics that are somewhat hard to grasp: "You know that your words must be followed by actions and you think to yourself there must be a better way the pragmatist's way is slightly submerged you find common buoyancy and sigh there are those who would sink you but they're much easier to identify..." All of the lyrics kind of flow with this constant stream, so it's almost like each song is one long, complete thought. Very unusual, but interesting. I hate to give this such a low rating, but the recording seriously blows. It's a huge disservice for this band. Their work is pretty damn original (which is extremely rare these days) and holds a lot of potential, but I can't ignore how annoying and ineffective the production is. Sorry. It's a damn shame though, as everything else, even down to the lyrics, is already in place. Maybe next time.