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My God
Flotsam & Jetsam |
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In what is being hailed as the band's best and heaviest effort in years, "My God" certainly sees F&J's fire burning as strong as ever in 2001. While many from their era have either branched out, sold out, been "smoked out" or simply vanished, the Southwestern thrashers have, to coin a bad cliché, "kept it real" all throughout their fifteen plus year existence from the masterful "Doomsday for the Deceiver" days up to the present, home again, where they're most comfortable. "Again" referring not to a mindless wandering and album and a half worth of soul searching but rather a playing to their strengths which implies writing deep lyrically intense music surrounded by a balanced mixture of speed-driven riffing and technically proficient musicianship. Bill Metoyer mans the controls this time and certainly has added some new life into the band sound, which for one album anyway, seemed to become very hollowed out and blunt-"Unnatural Selection" was in fact a solid record but lacked the intensity the band is capable of. "My God" from the onset smokes with "Dig Me Up To Bury Me," vintage F&J and the perfect introduction for the reestablishing of power-classic "Doomsday…" era density to be sure. As they've been wont to do over the years, Flotsam, for all their power and might have been equally revered for their structural diversity and dynamic directional shifts that have served to add the extra depth of character to their music without losing track of the original starting point. Where others fail, they gain strength. Other standouts include "Keep Breathing," a simmered down reaction to offset the fiery first track, a nerve-wracking true to life confirmation that we really are not alone… placed into a high-powered rhythmic surge the likes of which haven't been heard in a number of albums, indeed one of the best of the lot and of their career for that matter. Much of the material contains a various degree of inner subtleties that at first listen are easy to gloss over as just average mid-point Metal mediocrity without any real sense of purpose yet beneath the surface we'll soon discover there's much more taking place-there's that off the board scale or unexpected meter shift that moves so swiftly sometimes easily avoided without careful listening… One thing that becomes inescapable a few songs in is that Eric A.K. behind the mic hasn't poured this much into it in years-belting it out with something to prove. The same might be said for "My God" as a whole which is not a comeback record by any stretch and yet for about 80% of the time you're left feeling that they must have still left something in the studio at the end of the last record because this one's a much more motivated riff-based Heavy Rock record that for comparison fits well between "Cuatro," and "Drift," with a few encouraging nods toward the "Doomsday/Disgrace" period. Released by Metal Blade Records
GmbH, P.O. Box 1332, 73054 Eislingen, Germany. Review by Vinnie Apicella [va85@columbia.edu]
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