Bambara – Dreamviolence
Emerald Weapon
April 30, 2013

What It Sounds Like:  A noisy clash of post-punk, continually searching (or not) for its footing.

Dreamviolence is a mess.

I understand their stance here, I do.  Let the darkness overtake you, drone on like you’re in the middle of a haunted house, and just do your absolute best to keep the screeching at bay before it drives you into the madhouse.  I get it, I get it.

There’s no consistency here, though.  Divine Teeth is made for a background experience, but wouldn’t make any sense to ever play live.  Birds Calls needs to make some sort of statement sitting at track three, but instead gives us an out-of-the-gate death growl to try to scare the pants off of us, and then continues down an uninspired path with an overabundance of clangs, clashes, and howls from the crypt.  Oh it’s unnerving, don’t mistake me – it accomplishes that task.  But the repetition is simply overkill.  Hawk Bones, the closest thing that we have here that attempts to set itself apart from the rest, uses a madman’s hydraulic organ to spur crazed despair, like what you might encounter in an alternate universe’s version of Transylvania.  Bar tries the disenchanted acoustic approach, and halfway succeeds.

There’s thirteen tracks here, and four of them just break the minute barrier, offering nothing further than some possible (at its best) dark-monk chanting on Disappear, or at its worst, freaking white noise droning with some slight train-tracks static on Young Mother.  Most of these could pass for snapshots of the more full-length songs, because there’s nothing to differentiate them except their length.

At least Nail Polish has a bass groove, but even with it, it’s nothing to write home about.  Train Daze doesn’t even make me want to live – it makes me want to stick my head in an oven, because it’s so devoid of any substance.  It’s like if Iceage had an ugly little brother that couldn’t ever be good at sports like his older brother.

Look, I like noise.  I don’t always need a chorus and melody.  But as deep as my love of music runs, there’s just nothing here to hold on to.  It’s like slamming your Ice Axe into the side of a mountain, putting your weight on it, and having the hold just break away as you fall to your doom.

Pass.

2/10

If you had to listen to two tracks:  Hawk Bones / Bar