Divided By Zero - The Black Sea Review
Posted by Brandon Ratliff on 06.14.2006
Did you know it's mathematically impossible to divide by zero? Not that you care...
Divided By Zero - The Black Sea
Release Date: June 6th, 2006
Label: Sik World Recordings
Produced By: Mikey Doling
First Single: Ashes Of Armies
Recommended Downloads: Ashes Of Armies, Don't Wait, Protection, Helicopter
Divided By Zero is:
Vocals: Zach Goode
Guitar/Vocals: Jeremy Ronstadt
Guitar/Vocals: James Albers
Bass: Rice
Drums: Jason Vick
Additional Musicians:
Too damn many to track down and list.
Tracklisting
1. The Black Sea
2. Ashes Of Armies
3. Chemical
4. Damn The Dream
5. Heavy Metal Parking Lot
6. Drowning Not Waving
7. Helicopter
8. Double Negative
9. The World Is Not Mine
10. Protection
11. Everyone
12. Anoxia
13. Strike In The Time Bomb Town
14. Don't Wait
15. Shame
Total Runtime: 56:58
Something can be said about the gall of not only a band that releases its debut on 06.06.06, but also a record label taking its own first plunge into the world of releases. Sik World has long been known and heralded as the premeire outlet for novelty apparel, and now they are going to be working even more with the very musicians that don their clothing. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Sik World Records. In conjunction with Corporate Punishment Records and Navarre Distribution, Sik World is launching itself as a record label with the debut LP of Divided By Zero.
But this review isn't about the label, it's about the album. The thirteen song album (The Black Sea is an intro and Anoxia is a musical interlude) is ambitious to say the least, and all over the damn map to put it in more fitting terms. At times you'll get songs that sound eerily reminiscent of other hard rock bands past, and at others you'll probably wonder what the hell these guys were thinking when they wrote this stuff. But the eternal question still stands...
Is it any good, or did Sik World make a calculated error is releasing The Black Sea?
Okay, bad puns aside, it's a solid album all the way through. But as with any album that has so much content, there's bound to be some stuff that just doesn't work quite that well...right? Not necessarily. The album has plenty of tracks have have a mean edge filled with chugging guitars and double bass, but in between those tracks are a few select cuts lamented by smoothly sung vocals and...a sitar? Yeah, there's that too. Double Negative starts with a scathing aural attack for the intro and verse, but slows it down for the chorus, which is a dark and brooding piece of sonic landscape fit for the twisted, spawned from hell director's cut of Aladdin. Ashes Of Armies, the song that seems to be the first single, starts the album off on a high octane note that lets up for the funk-metal hybrid of a verse, which in turn leads way to the punk sounding chorus. And that's what you get here folks, an album full of tracks that never seem to want to stick with one particular style of music. To hear any given song shift from a "let's smoke a joint and have a good time" reggae verse to a "die you fucking backstabbing piece of shit" metal chorus, well, needless to say, it's not something you hear very often.
This is a review though, so if I had to pick one major thing that is "wrong" with this album, it would be that a lot of the times when the band is doing either a song with heavy verses and/or melodic hard rock choruses, they sound almost EXACTLY like lost tracks from the Through The Eyes recording sessions of Flaw. What you have to consider though, is the simple fact that if Divided By Zero were going to outright copy ANY hard rock band (which they explicitly do not do), Flaw is definitely a good choice as they were definitely one of the better hard rock bands during their time. But when I say they sound like Flaw tracks, I mean every aspect of the riffs/passages, even the vocals at times carry a pretty distinct Chris Volz tone and style to them. But hey, that's why they call them influences right?
Another track of note is the dark, almost entirely vocal driven track Helicopter. With lyrics dealing with deep depression and suicide (though in a very metaphorical way, hence the title), the song hits home for me personally as this was something I went through in my life once. Thankfully that time is long past, but if you've ever dealt with such things, take the time to really listen to and comprehend the lyrics; I can almost guarantee that they will hit you like they did me.
Overall, despite the creepy release date and the fact that the effort was put out by a brand new label, this is one not to miss. It has elements to appeal to fans of everything from radio rock to metal to pop, reggae, punk, so on and so forth. The band are in a good spot however, assuming Navarre does their job and distributes the album well (though I will say that thus far they are doing an extremely good job with getting the Corporate Punishment albums out there to chain stores and small shops alike) and gets the album to stores, I think Sik World and Corporate Punishment may have started a partnership worth more than its weight in gold due simply to the internet promotional capabilities that Sik World has. But don't wait to hear how good this release is through the proverbial grapevine, go check it out now. I've said it before and I'll surely say it again, you definitely won't be disappointed.
The 411: Call it hard rock, punk, reggae, jazz, lounge...whatever. They all fit. With song structures that seem to sometimes make no sense but still form extremely cohesive tracks, the album runs the gamut at times switching from a blistering metal riff to a jazz chorus to a punk breakdown. And add to that they do all of this really well, and you've got a real winner. The only negative thing that can be said about this band, and subsequiently, album, is that at points they sound exactly like Through The Eyes era Flaw, but hell, Flaw kicked ass too, so that's not really a problem. As I said before, go pick this one up, you will definitely be glad you did.
