A Musical Mess
Oh, here we go, another 'Brutal Sonic Assault'. This phrase usually means a complete incoherent row from start to finish. Brutal should be like a hammer to the head, music that tries to bludgeon the soul, punch the ears and crush the will. Making a goddam awful row from start to finish doesn't really qualify. Any bunch of musicians can gather together, turn up the amps and blaze away, it's easy, but the ability to craft it into slabs of accessible noise is where the skill lies. Rainydayfuckparade may have off-kilter rhythms, charging guitar riffs and insane drumming, but the result is a musical mess that irritates rather than excites.
The production doesn't really help the home side either. It's dry, boomy and ineffective. Dudley's drums take over the mix due to their rumbling sound and over played drum lines. Morton's guitar sound is indistinctive and lacks any real crunch or definition causing whatever notes he's playing to fall helplessly into the overall musical mire. The vocals are pretty dreadful as well, lacking meaning and any sort of intonation to the point where I soon found myself skipping the vocal parts to find the more interesting and appealing atmospheric instrumental breaks.
The band does seem to excel at these atmospheric experimentation sections of their music. Opener 'Wasteland' finally stops the utter row to break the song into a genuinely interesting middle section, before being ruined again later on in the track. Likewise, 'Carried on Tides' slows to a gorgeous bass and clean guitar ditty at the 2:25 mark. It is these little bites of ideas that save this release from a total grilling. In fact by the time the last track, 'Luminous' had finished I wondered why Raindayfuckparade bothered with the noise elements in their music at all because their experimental ideas were so much better.
The bottom line is, I can't recommend this album to anyone on any level. The heavy sections of this disc are muddy, messy and ruined by poor production and even poorer vocals. The middle sections, where the band let the music breath, are wonderful and are a breath of fresh air, but if you find these kind of elements interesting then I think you're best buying something by The Mars Volta instead. Avoid.