Secondskin – Captive Audience Review
Posted by Chris Crowing on 06.02.2010
Glasgow metal band straddling the line between heaviness and melody with the result that it's the best thing I've heard this year. Check it out!
Secondskin – Captive Audience Review
Track Listing
1 If You Knew...
2 Pawned Life
3 Fashion Victim
4 Captive Audience
5 Spoonful of Sugar
6 Triggered Happy
7 Is This His Far We've Come?
8 Meanderthal
9 Among the Mute Majority
10 Capable of Anything
11 HPID
12 ...What the River Carries
Glasgow prog metallers Secondskin’s (check out their myspace profile here) press release promises a lot, and given their reputation for rare yet coruscating live performance I was very interested to see what this full length release had to offer.
With positive comparisons to the likes of Isis and Meshuggah ringing in my ears, I press play and listen hard….
The opening track “If you knew…” is an atmospheric instrumental, full of the sound of rain, almost industrial noises in the background and some ethereal keys before a melancholy guitar line appears towards the end.
“Pawned Life” breaks the melancholy atmosphere with a driving riff that sounds on first listen to be quite straightforward but rewards careful listening by revealing some complex patterns with the guitars and drums pulling together to hide some irregular time signatures under what would pass for 4/4 if you weren’t paying attention. The heaviness gives way to a sweet melody and some clean-soaring vocals, establishing the pattern we’ll see through the entire album.
The next track up is the shortest on the album and the one I could most see as a star-making single. Interestingly (perhaps deliberately and ironically) it’s called “Fashion Victim” and while it retains the undeniable musical credibility of the rest of the record, the general melodious nature of it makes it reminiscent of the more soaring, affective moments from such relative heavyweights as Killswitch Engage or Funeral for a Friend.
The title track maintains this relatively accessible trend by utilizing the kind of high pitched lead guitar and soaring vocals over some pleasingly chunky riffage which puts me in mind of Lacuna Coil back when they were on top form, although the next track “Spoonful of Sugar” brings something different to the table, being wonderfully retrained and layered, building into an emotive anthem with a surprising break into an almost 90s bout of heaviness some four and a half minutes into the song.
“Triggered Happy” is a gloriously driving tune, initially sounding a little like Therapy? (or is it just that the title puts me in mind of “Trigger Inside”…) but then resolving into a riff solid enough to make any Chimaira or Lamb of God fan smile before settling into the more restrained music and soaring vocal we’re getting pleasantly used to.
“Is This How Far We’ve Come?’ is the longest track on the album and is very nearly an instrumental, with the song being 3:17 old before vocals are heard and the lyrics consist wholly of the track title, repeated and eventually merging into a rousing round. This song comes across like the bastard child of the Butterfly Effect and Russian Circles with a hint of the haunting beauty to be found in a Gregorian choir or Clannad’s best moments on the distaff side.
This is simply the most beautiful, awe inspiring new music I’ve heard this year.
About six minutes into the song, something awesome and frightfully heavy happens and the songs turns into a swaggering riff monster for a few minutes before drawing back into the haunting beauty of the melody from the start of the song, but now somehow tinged with menace…
The gloriously titled “Meanderthal” has a hint of the kind of soaring chorus that characterized 90s alt rock (which sadly seems a near-dead art) trading audio space with the kind of precise, muted riffage that puts a generation of melodic death metal and metalcore acts to shame and some almost clean, atmospheric passages to create an excellent, varied, interesting whole.
Another glorious song title ‘Among the Mute Majority’ continues the restrained melody / compelling riffage pattern to good effect with some almost funky interludes contrasting with some Gojira-esque heaviness to a final effect that somehow reminds me a little of American Head Charge or Mudvayne’s more progressive moments.
There are moments during “Capable of Anything” where a chord change, bass line or guitar riff has me thinking I’m listening to Opeth, Mastodon, Coheed & Cambria or perhaps one of the instrumental passages on a Peeping Tom or Tomahawk record (for all the superlatives I’ll throw in their direction, I won’t say that Ian McCall’s vocals sound like Mike Patton) and given that it all sounds definitively like what I’ve come to think of as 'the Secondskin sound’ the fact that I’m placing them on a level with some of my most respected artists is quite telling.
Perhaps I’m getting a little jaded this far into a demanding record, but “HPID” doesn’t stand out, apart from some memorably weighty riffage in the last two minutes. However, the song is musically impressive, emotive, well put together and a good microcosm of the album as a whole. There is no insult implied in not standing out amid such undoubted quality.
The last track “…what the river carries” is the partner to the opening track, reprising the plaintiff melody before descending into discord and distortion as the gain is steadily turned up to an almost Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Nine Inch Nails effect.
All through the record, the sheer quality of the musicianship is evident. The guitars are by turns perfectly clean and joyously heavy, the use of effects is exemplary, always effective and enthralling but never falling into the u2 trap of overuse and ubiquity. The drums are fantastic, holding down the irregular rhythms with aplomb and providing a sterling base for the rest of their band. The vocals are remarkable for a band with a clear death metal influence in that the only screaming on show is in a distinctly ‘backing vocal’ role for a portion of ‘Meanderthal’ and the rest of the time, the comparisons are more with the likes of Karnivool or the Butterfly Effect.
It’s easy to talk about the progressive qualities of Captive Audience, about how the shortest proper song is over five minutes long, about how tight the band are and about how complex some of the arrangements are. However, I don’t think that is the greatest triumph here.
While the record is undeniably credible, technically impressive and all that very dry, very self righteous, very superior kind of stuff it is easy as a reviewer to enthuse about, what is more important is that I like it as a music fan, as a person, as something I would put on the stereo for ENJOYMENT as much if not more than any intellectual appeal or any crawling desire to be seen to be more muso or more metal than the next guy.
We live in an age beset by relentlessly commercialized ‘alternative’ music but also by it’s direct opposite, the kind of band who look to be so arse-clenchingly credible that they squeeze all joy, all energy from their doubtless technically worthy efforts.
The sweet spot lies in between, with some bands veering closer to the current fashions, to MTV-friendly hooks and some (far fewer) bands veering closer to the progressive and the impenetrable but also retaining some sense of melody, of hook, of joy, of honesty.
Secondskin number among the few who make up the latter category, and the triumph of Captive Audience is that I can happily compare it in favorable terms to Isis AND 36 Crazyfists, to Opeth AND the Butterfly Effect, to Faith No More AND Meshuggah.
Indeed, I’ve favorably compared various parts of this record to no fewer than twenty one other bands, all much respected by myself and occupying musical niches from post rock to alternative, from emo to industrial from melodic death metal to nu metal and the thing is, for all that you can pick out some influences and make some journalistic allusion to ‘it sounds a bit like’ there is absolutely NO question of imitation, plagiarism, or trend following and at the end of the day, this band sound like no-one but themselves and that is accomplishment enough in these times.
Secondskin wear the variety of their influences woven into a fine tartan of their own devising and perhaps the biggest question is, ‘where do they go now?’ They stand on a knife edge between progressive impenetrability and populist melodiousness, and it would be to their loss to diminish either aspect of their sound. It’s a sad indictment of the modern musical landscape that in order to gain more attention they may need to choose one path or other over the more appealing synthesis they currently embody, That said, with a band displaying such talent, ambition, clarity and unity of purpose one thing is for sure. I can’t WAIT to see what comes next…
The 411: Simply the best thing I've heard this year, outpointing the Deftones, Fear Factory and Coheed and Cambria. With enough melodies and hooks to stick on in the background but with such awesome, layered musicality I keep getting sucked into the arrangements, with no wish to surface. Simply beautiful.
