1: Centralia and that

First post on my new web log. 

Hi.

....

I think I'll review one of my favourite albums for the sake of something to do. 

Here you go.

Centralia (2007)

Car-Bomb

Relapse Records

Centralia, the debut of the aptly named Car Bomb (a band who by their own admission are akin to "a jet engine propelling gravel into your skull"), is damn near perfect. It's 32 minutes of flawlessly crafted, incredibly well written, technical... something. Unlike 90% of bands you'll hear, it's nearly impossible to glean many influences from listening to their music alone (they list Bjork and Meshuggah as amongst their favourites)so you need to think up long contrived, and slightly comedic sentences to try to do them justice. Think Experimental-Metal meets Hardcore and Faith No More in a crack den run by Carl Jung and Dante Alighieri and you're in the right mindset. From the opening drum roll of Pieces of You, the album launches into a series of seriously spazzed out, yet totally cohesive math-metal vignettes on the subject of existance. Basically, if you enjoy getting punched in the face with wisdom, you'll love these guys.

Highlights include the 28 second long Rid (Pure, stop-start calculated noise), the almost-rapped vocals of Cellophane Stilletto and Best Intentions, the sheer insanity of His Eyes and (in my opinion) the bands centrepiece; that freaky harmonic thing the guitarist does throughout the album. I have no clue how he does it, but it adds this intense, frenetic energy to the music in all the right places, most notably towards the end of Hypnotic Worm. Pure musical gold.

As continuing my attempt to describe to the music in words could never be truely do it many favours, let's focus on the lyics for a moment;

Caught up in a frenzy like rats crawling on there belly

Staying low to the ground to escape the hundred-million K

Reasoning technology has never soothed the taste of ease

That's running from our lips to blind us in our greedy eyes

Force us to pave the blind shroud of hell.

This machine was built from the 

Metal that we scraped 

After the last world war

Hunger for blood

During peace time

Advance

(Best Intetions)

Now, I'm not sure how many of you listen to metal, but if you want a frame of reference to gauge these lyrics by;

 

Do I have the strength to know how I'll go? 

Can I find it inside to do what I should have known? 

Do I have the strength to know how I'll go? 

Can I find it inside to do what I should have known? 

My lifestyle determines my deathstyle 

(Life is pain) 

Rising tide pushes to the other side 

(Life is pain) 

My lifestyle determines my deathstyle 

(Life is pain) 

Rising tide pushes to the other side 

(It's all the same) 

(Frantic from Metallica's best selling St. Anger album)

Ok, I'll admit that Metallica never really stood a chance here, but I figured I should probably contrast Car Bomb's virtually unknown ode-to-an-atom-bomb to a single that got to #21 in the US Billboard's top 200 chart. I'm unsure whether or not that's a testament to the writing prowess of chaps in Car-Bomb, or a damning piece of evidence against the intelligence of the general population of the US...

At any rate the album's best moment happens to be it's last. The final track HN51 (named for the strain of bird-flu that may kill us all [Metallica reference hurrr]) is perhaps one of the most haunting pieces of music I have ever heard in my life. It the first half consists of a rather flowery description of the symptoms that the eponymous disease entails, drawled rhythmically over a guitar sounds like a swarm of locusts, coming to fuck you up. The piece climaxes (and ends) with the vocalist screaming at you, with balls out;

The ending is coming prepare for the eradication
The ending is coming
Annihilation coming

With sentiments of finality and futile apocalyptic-desperation, I could honestly not think of a better ending to that album, nor to this review.