I remember the time around March of 2002 when I suffered a minor
\nanxiety attack. That was the first time I had heard that the
\nhard-rock heroes from Norway, Gluecifer, were releasing their fifth
\nstudio album,
\nBasement Apes<\/i>, on Sony Records in Scandinavia
\n(SPV\/Steamhammer rest of Europe) with a far greater pocketbook than
\nthe band’s independent labels of the past. I also recall that
\nanxiety attack ratcheting up a bit when I heard news that Martin
\nHederos of pop-rockin’ Soundtrack of Our Lives fame and the quirky
\nCato Salsa would be guest artists on the release performing piano
\nand organ duties. Ack!! Any true Gluecifer fan would have done a
\nsimilar double-take as piano’s and organ’s mix with the trademark
\nGluecifer rock sounds like the proverbial oil-and-water
\nconcoction.<\/p>\n
For the uninitiated listener, Gluecifer have always sat on the
\n“rock throne” on past releases; this proclamation was cleverly
\ndocumented in a song of the same name on their second album,
\nRidin’ The Tiger<\/i>. So maybe, just maybe, all I needed was
\njust a valium. Surely this album would not be a letdown.<\/p>\n
So, were my fears founded or not? Well, of the first few tracks
\non the disc, “Reversed” and “Brutus” play like any of the tracks on
\nthe previous album,
\nTender Is The Savage<\/i>. Upbeat songs with vocalist Biff Malibu
\non the verge of hitting his traditional fever pitch in parts of the
\nsongs, conspicuously looping bass lines brought to us by Stu Manx,
\nand a dual guitar frenzy on the second song by lead guitarists
\nCaptain Poon and Raldo Useless. Excellent!<\/p>\n
And then the bottom begins to fall out. In hearing “Losing End”
\nfor the first time, I picture Biff having pulled up a stool in the
\nrecording studio as he orchestrates the vocals on this song in a
\nfirst gear type of sing-a-long. If one wants to discount this
\nthought as being petty since musicians are often moved to try and
\ndo new things, keep my analogy in mind when you hear “Little Man”
\ndeeper into the album.<\/p>\n
As I heard the band’s first released single and fourth track
\n“Easy Living” for the first time, I could not get over the fact
\nthat Biff tells us that he’s done with the easy living 28 times, by
\nmy count, in a song that clocks in at just three minutes. I find
\nthis just plain strange, as Biff has typically told his audience so
\nmuch more in ways far more clever than this repetitive monologue.
\nBy contrast, instrumentally this song hits on all cylinders as
\ndescribed in the previous commentary.<\/p>\n
After this, the album truly breaks down into a bunch of slickly
\nrecorded tracks that appear to aim at capturing a new breed of
\nfans. These are songs that a new listener of the band might not shy
\naway from, but that lack the attitude and emotion of everything the
\nband has put into past recordings. In the end,
\nBasement Apes<\/i> is truly a mixed bag of songs — a few
\nthrowback rockers, a few songs that are truly pop fluff, and a few
\ntracks that putter along at speeds barely more daring than an
\nacoustic number.<\/p>\n
So, whereas Gluecifer may have sung about 455-horsepower engines
\non full bed frames in the past (“Under My Hood”),
\nBasement Apes<\/i> ends up sounding like little more than a
\nsputtering four-cylinder on the highway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":26335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6504],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-37564","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-gluecifer","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37564"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}