Beautifully serious
United Sons Of Toil are seriously committed to their music, their Manifesto accompanies the album in the liner notes and each track has an accompanying political message to get across, 'Overturning the Rumford Fair Housing Act' for example has the liner notes proclaiming "The old guard is always surprised when the people they subjugate, exploit, and leave hopeless suddenly explode, seemingly unprovoked, in a rage of violent indignation." Emotionally, music has always had the ability to tap in to the zeitgeist and this album seems all the more relevant given the current political situation: for instance, the timing of this review coincided with the rioting troubles here in the UK in recent days, making for an interesting slant on it's content for this reviewer.
The album as a whole deals with some very heavy duty subject matter: racism, exploitation, alcoholism, the greed of the state, violence and power struggles, however lyrically the tracks can be quite ambiguous, written more poetically than as direct statements and the message can only be properly understood through reading of the extensive liner notes which even have references to reading material if you wish to follow up on the thought processes behind them.
Musically USOT are rootless, with touches of many genres melding; alt-rock, punk rock, doom laden metal amongst them and it's all pulled together by a shed load of attitude; you can hear snarling, jagged riffs, gruff off kilter vocals with the odd gang shout thrown in ('State Sponsored Terrorism') and many of the tracks are either wrapped in intense washes of epic noise or huge sludgy moments ('The Contrition Of The Addict') and to top it all of there are some cracking melodic riffs ('Sword Of Damocles'). You can enjoy this record purely from a musical point of view, of course and it stands up well with some pretty memorable moments and quirky jagged touches, but it's far more interesting to listen with liner notes in hand for the full experience.