|
"A Wish This Simple" Gladyss Patches |
|
They come right at ya with a powerful RATM demeanor, shifty riffs, full use of the Rap/Rock rants and shady verses before driving the point home in the chorus-a choral bloodletting, each song a purification of personal pain and subsequent relief. We'll take "Vanishing"
the opening track as an example but really we can go down the list,
it's been done and heard before countless times and we accept it as the
current style The elementalist nature is there, the tunes, deeply embedded in the Nu-Metal new age vibe which is to say guitars tuned low, heavy, repetitively ground chords to accentuate the opening delivery, offset by a keen sense of melodic awareness, hereafter known simply as "verse" and it's that extra dash of color that puts these guys up there in rank-yeah, I can reel off a number of bands that share this likeness, you've read about them a thousand fold, and I like how they, GP, go from being Kid Rock in a Biohazard-ish environment in one instant, Billy Corgan the next, bar-coded, bar chording, openly arranged, major to minor within the thought, somewhat spiky, spooky, psychy, sometimes relevant, others redundant, it's a formula that's worked well for many, these guys use it to full extent and at the end of the day, the tunes are pretty stand up-"Vanishing," "Headlights," "Peeled," and a personal fave, "Spin," the latter two featuring forefront ambience to support their fist-clenching cause. I like the name too… I mean, I like "Smashed Gladys" better but I can live with this, and the supposed derivation from an Irish porn star of all things, and "A Wish This Simple," step back, step away, leave a while, unreality, a nice concept, and so why then does something so simple always seem to be so difficult anyway? Stop the world, shut the lights, and close your eyes, look like old Gladyss getting' ready to groove. Released by NFE Records Review by Vinnie Apicella [va85@columbia.edu] |