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I
like records. And frankly, I don’t care who they come from.
Usually we get bands and as a fan of music my expectations are
high already. Unless they come from Nitro, life’s too short for
shitty ones. Other times we get these projects where people
from different bands get together for either a good time, an
excuse to get away from ‘real life’ or to extract their
creative juices all at once in the hope that something worthy
would come out. Then, the expectations are much higher. Now, we
are not only expecting great chops and quality songwriting, but
hopefully an original sound will come out of the sessions.
Unless, they are together to realize a juvenile dream (where
let’s say you worshipped Angus Young and want to have your own
blues based rock bar band) I can really see no excuse to come
out sounding too much like other bands. And you know that’s
exactly going to be the case when the album comes emblazoned
with a sticker that reads, ‘for fans of Tool, Massive Attach
and Pink Floyd.‘ So now I am expecting occasional heavy
moments, lots of space and ethereal ambience and some of those
jams with fragile solos that Pink Floyd perfected in the late
60’s/early 70’s and immortalized with its light shows.
And that’s
exactly what we get with Zodiak, a hairy band of underground
figures that includes members of Slacks, Balboa, Javelina and
the absolutely outstanding Rosetta. To be fair I’d add an
adjective to Slacks and Balboa too but I have failed to check
their releases thus far, and a review of Javelina’s self-titled
shall surface in the upcoming two weeks. Now, I like the
artwork, Sermons is all characters against a black
background. Apparently random, I couldn’t tell you with a
straight face if they actually have a meaning, but did the font
had to be so small? It’s nearly impossible to make up the
relevant information pertaining to the members and the recording
of it, which takes us straight to the song titles. With specs on
me my eye sight is almost 20/20 and I still can’t fucking read
one of ‘em.
Considering
that all the member’s day bands have a nasty heavy side, I am
surprised by how Zodiak for the most part fails when getting
metal. The seventh song (“Outlined”, thanks Amazon.com) has a
nice ambience, with layers form beginning to end, but its core
is distorted and though the recording doesn’t help, it sounds as
if Zodiak just got disoriented. Maybe they stared at the artwork
for too long. The best part of Zodiak is when the go for the
Pink Floyd angle that’s mentioned in the sticker; opener
“Excavate” is a nice balance of clear and twisted guitars,
growls and clean vocals a la Tool’s Maynard, and “Sermons” is
more of the Live at Pompeii kind; where caressing vocals
chords slowly ascend in a turgid atmosphere to a passage of open
guitars. That’s the highest point of Sermons, almost
almighty, but it comes too soon and doesn’t last enough.
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