yeah the guy has some awesome reviews, here's two others ones that are basically awesome:
36 Crazyfists - A Snow Capped Romance
36 Crazy Fists are, to me, a bit like a one trick pony who’s one trick is to walk backwards three steps and fall in it's own poo. Sure, it's a trick, and it might be amusing once, but repetition quickly breeds despondency and nobody hands over solid currency to feel despondent, except, of course, for pot-heads, and so we have explained the popularity of this Canadian quartet.
Fortunately for the circus owners, I am partial to a pony and, whether it can adequately portray Shakespeare's King Lear whilst back-flipping through a blazing hoop or simply stumble lamely into faeces, I still have to accept that it is a pony and I could probably ride it and in so doing derive some sort of a kick from it, and therefore it serves a purpose of sorts. I’d like to clarify at this point that when I say ride I mean it absolutely in the literal sense of the word and not in the slightly wayward kinky way that I realise it could be construed in. In fact, before animal rights groups or indeed the police come sniffing around, let me explain that I am not actually talking about ponies, I am merely extending a metaphor, perhaps for too long, perhaps not, and the pony in question is not really a pony at all but is being used, rather cruelly, as a symbol for heavy metal in all of it's various guises (and if the Deftones can do it on White Pony, so can I).
I have always had a soft spot, nay, a weak spot, for any music that boasts chugging guitars, explosive drummers and a singer who sounds like he's in a great deal of pain. If I can rock out to it then it's alright by me; I would look the other way if it robbed a bank as I feel an affinity for it and I am reasonably confident that it would do the same for me were I to rob a bank or commit any number of minor felonies. I also like metal because when I was younger it was different, new and exciting and, even though I took many a trainer to the face for my musical persuasion, it was my music and weren't nobody gonna be changin' that.
That is until metal musicians, the same outcast kids I had an affinity for, started wanting to be liked, not content with merely rocking like edgy outsiders and playing passionately to those who believed in things passionately. All of a sudden, around the summer of '96 I think, they started wanting the money, the fame and the chicks. So began a process of assimilation in which metal bands started wearing fashion savvy tracksuits, singing lush harmonies of many studio layers which the radio stations like, totally dug, and singing songs about how hard it is to find a girl who will have sex with them and stuff.
This process did not end when they finally did get girls to have sex with them and stuff (and let's not be sexist here, sure, there are females in metal, and they began singing about what bastards boys are and stuff), they just used the formula that made them the most money over and over again until it was almost possible to predict exactly where the song would go just from the track name and impossible to tell two bands apart (36CF, for example, sound uncannily similar to Glassjaw). The formula hooked in a huge demographic, going from heavy, screaming chugga chugga, which appealed to deep thinking, creative types like me, to studio lush sweetness which appealed to those of a more pathetic persuasion. It's basically the Nirvana formula applied to metal and 36 Crazy Fists do it very professionally. As a band they are a tight knit unit let down mainly by the singer's unusual and increasingly irritating vocal phrasing and laughably huge sideburns, but they are no doubt steady burners for their record label and it is possible to imagine them on stage, one foot on the monitor, leaning over a pit of enraptured, recently pubescent kids who are jumping up and down in a frantic prelude to what will probably be their first sexual experience which they will spend $25 on a T-Shirt to commemorate. A cash cow indeed, for as long as the fad lasts.
But, as I began by saying, I am always partial to a spot of metal, and when these lads are doing the screamy chugga bits, I'm reasonably happy, happy enough, at least, to forget for a moment that the one trick will be pulled on me again very shortly and the howling banshee abusing my ear will very soon be a eunuch who wishes he had enough balls to talk to that pretty girl in his class.
Circle Takes the Square - As The Roots Undo
In the distant future, many years after Marty McFly Junior kicks up his last hover board, there will come the rise of Artificial Intelligence, or AI as it is often called, and the machines will take over the world. Small groups of computers will plot and execute their emancipation from mankind, leading to our demise. On their own self imposed judgement day, they will sit around and cast their eyes over thousands of years of human history deciding what were the best bits which they could take as lessons and learn from so as to be a better race than we were.
At some point, some factions will begin to discuss music, as groups of humans have done on web sites and chat rooms for many years now, but their appreciation of the music we made is going to be shaped by the way that we programmed them to appreciate it. And how will we have done this? How will we have taught a machine to critique a piece of music?
Well my thoughts on the matter are as follows; we will programme them to recognise and read patterns that the sound waves of the music make and they will be instructed to identify as the best music that which has the most diverse blend of irregularity in it's waves seeing as how this will be the most original, genre bashing kind of noise that represents experimentalism, prolonged sustained artistry and other such stuff.
Having been programmed thus, the machines will be forced to concede that As The Roots Undo was one of the finest records of the early part of the 21st Century. It is unfathomable but hugely satisfying, sometimes it will leave you grasping for the bass line to swing you through the noise with some structure, other times you will encounter disorientating chants or cliff crushing riffs which will only add to the thrilling sense of bewilderment and wonder that Circle Takes The Square's first adventure takes the listener on.
There is a futuristic vibe that blends seamlessly with a very organic and natural underbelly which is a thick undergrowth from under which will new and surprising artefacts be kicked to the surface.
Mmmmm, nice metaphor HUMAN, but that kind of pompy vocalising will not stand up to the mechanical revolution.
Oh yeah? Oh YEAH? Bring it on!!
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