Good morning, class, and welcome to “Remedial Noise Rock 101.”
I’m Mr. Thelen, your instructor. Today, we’re going to review the
major mistakes a group can make when releasing an album and how
they could have been avoided.
Our subject for today’s discussion is Georgia grind-rockers
Norma Jean and their sophomore release,
O God, The Aftermath. Now, I’m not forgetting that this was
essentially a re-birth for the group, as they had replaced their
singer and bassist since their previous release
Bless The Martyr And Kiss The Child, so a bit of uncertainty
could be expected — even forgiven — from Norma Jean. But they are
still an established band, and they make several big mistakes with
this release. We’ll try to cover them all in one class period, so
try to save your questions until the end of class.
First things first, the cardinal mistake made: Don’t piss off
the reviewer by making things difficult for them. I’ve been doing
this gig long enough to know that occasionally we get sent material
that is still in the “final polishing” phase, and I can live with
that. But to send a reviewer a disc with copy protection that you
have to install (sorry, I don’t install programs I don’t know
anything about), and each track broken up into 30- to 60-second
snippets to prevent copying or posting to file-sharing services —
Jesus, I needed a fuckin’ schematic to figure out which track I was
on, and by the end of the disc, I really didn’t care. Memo to Solid
State Records: if this is how you send review copies out, don’t
bother sending me any more. (And, for the record: I have
never
posted any pre-release CD on any file-sharing service. I don’t
like the inference a disc like this sends to me — namely, that I,
as a reviewer, am to blame for the file-sharing mess the industry
finds itself in. How dare you.)
Okay, now that I’m off my soapbox, lesson two: I admit that I’m
getting old and that each new generation is supposed to have music
that confounds the previous. But would it kill anyone to include a
copy of the lyrics so I could at least pretend I was able to follow
the songs? (Keep in mind, I’m working off a pre-release copy;
possibly the commercial release does include them.)
Lesson three: unless you have music that really backs up your
whimsy, giving songs double-meaning names doesn’t mean shit. Even
glancing at the track listing on the disc, I had to groan a bit
when I saw song titles like “Bayonetwork,” “Disconnecktie” and
“Charactarantula.” Using clever names like these doesn’t make you
more like Tool.
Lesson four: when you’ve lost the listener’s interest due to the
first three faults, you really need to have music that slams home
the point that you’re a band to be taken seriously. And, I’m sorry,
gang, but I didn’t hear much of that on
O God, The Aftermath. The listener goes from the atonal
pounding on “Murderotica” to some semblance of musicianship on
“Bayonetwork” and “Delemmachine,” but Cory Brandan’s undecipherable
screams keep me from gaining any new insight into this band. The
only real glimmer of hope comes on “Disconnecktie,” which features
some of the best songwriting and playing on the disc, and did get
me interested in this disc again for a few minutes.
Granted, most of these criticisms will fall on deaf ears, and
fans of the noise-rock genre will get a thrill slam-dancing to
O God, The Aftermath. But Norma Jean has a long way to go
before I hold them up in comparison to such bands as, say, Nine
Inch Nails or Pantera.
