So I picked up a copy of the new Melt-Banana album yesterday, and the
first thing that came to mind was that the cover art looked like
something I would have expected to see on a Frontline Assembly album in
the '90s. For the duration of the first track, "Cell-Scape" sounds a
lot like the over-long intros to FLA songs, too.
Thankfully, the whooshing and panning silliness dies down pretty
quickly, and a whole bunch of fast, earnest RAWK ensues. The bass and
guitar work would fit in pretty well with Alec Empire's more recent
hard stuff, and I'm even reminded of the incredible drive behind the
track that Tom Morello did with the Prodigy... these really aren't cool
musical roots to be displaying, are they? Semi-unfortunately, the
vocals don't always fit too comfortably on top of the music... where
it's thick and heavy, they're sometimes thin and shrill, but any
discomfort this causes usually goes away when another layer of guitar
gets dropped into the mix and serious head-nodding resumes. Better yet,
when the Rawk knob is turned down a notch or three so that the vocals
can take over for a bit near the end, Yasuko starts channeling Alex
Welz from Lick, and the result is... fun. It's sort of like "Teeny
Shiny", minus the filler... aside from the intro, there's nothing on
this disc that I dislike. Whoo-ha!
-me
