Categories : Hard Rock + Metal, Miscellany, Music Reviews.
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Rating: 1/5 Released: January 23, 2007 Reviewer: Suzanne Goldman |
Prog-rock can be a beautiful thing. The concert experiences of groups like the Mars Volta are a testament to the possibility of how such frenetic cacophony can translate into a poetic and all-consuming sound that swallows you whole and leaves you dazed and grinning.
Emerging from Buffalo, NY, Damiera is a group aspiring to this kind of prog-rock greatness. With M(US)IC, Damiera boasts that their “debut brings to mind the progressive tones of At the Drive-In,†the now defunct precursor to the Mars Volta and Sparta.
Be warned: there’s a big gap between Damiera and their influences. What we hear on this album is a disjointed musical equivalent of a pretentious post-modern art display. The effort is there, but something crucial is missing.
Abrupt guitars and staccato beats deliver a disorienting and chaotic sound. There seems to be little connection between the stream-of-consciousness lyrics and the instruments that bang away behind them – the music fails to compliment the vocals, making the album sound as though two different bands are playing at the same time. The circus of sound makes it hard to not only get involved in the lyrics, but to decipher them at all. Aside from the occasional few lines that slip through, the lyrics are lost in this mess.
The greatest relief comes in the changes, where Damiera takes on the façade of a more conventional sound, but the result is two extremes that just don’t work together – the overly pretentious transitioning into the average, and back again. The mellow track ‘Departures’ is a welcome escape on this album, but even here there are moments that are far too hectic.
M(US)IC feels like a risk and the group deserves praise for its guts. But this album is unlikely to standout in the face of some impressive competition.
