Bought this when it came out at the Borders in Cherry Hill. Seems like a long time ago. Everything about seemed post-apocylyptic. Very few CDs left. I used to love the CD section in that store. The whole thing’s gone now of course. I remember I bought this and a small stack that day, this and a bunch of classical stuff. It was one of those intentional shifts.

I only had a download of Destroy Erase Improve“>Destroy Erase Improve before this. Future Breed Machine was a huge standout track on that but I never got that much into the album as a whole.

The big song off this one is supposed to be Bleed (stream the full track or watch the video here— you can also download it free here) But once you get past that opening bendy riff, which is pretty awesome, the rest of the song is kind of a standard extreme for the sake of extreme type thing. It represents their sound and general mood really well, but doesn’t really do the weird things that make them great. The video/single version takes out a long solo but this band isn’t really about solos either. It’s about the way they perform as a group.

My favorite is the opener, Combustion. It starts with a “oh shit, shit is going down” kind of intro guitar riff. (Very similar to the Kill Bill theme, but more uptempo). Indeed, shit is about to go down and it’s going to be fast. The stage is set. Right, but then the hi-hat starts counting off another beat entirely. “Oh shit—different shit is abo—“, too late! Two entirely different shits are now going down, it’s very loud, it’s very fast, there’s a crazy man screaming at you…it’s probably exactly what you were looking for or you hate it and it makes no sense. Fair enough. But consider this: you can always make it faster, you can always make it louder. That’s building the music up vertically. This band also takes it sideways. But they do it with complete precision and grace. That first countoff almost sounds like a mistake they left in. But when it comes around again and repeats exactly it just seems bonkers. The guitar plays alternating bars of 6/4 and 4/4, not that hard to count. But the drums are doing something else—I listened to this 100 times and I can’t really explain it and that’s fucking outstanding.

It segues very nicely into Electric Red and there’s time things going on in all the songs, I’m not breaking them all down, but I really like the dissonant half-note chords they slash out in this one under the verse, scraping with the sides of the pick it sounds like. Crazy.

The middle of the record seems like one big chunk to me, which is not a putdown it’s just how I’ve been listening to it. There’s moments of space and even beauty, but I couldn’t tell you what individual songs those are in. What I like about this band is when they are trying to get across a feeling that isn’t just bashing your brains in with brutal volume and complexity, they do it with only the guitars. There’s no sudden crooning or mallet work or anything like that. I like bands that can mix it up, but most suck at it. I like that there’s no attempt here. It’s really a cohesive whole.

Dancers to a Discordant System is a nice long, slow(ish) classic album ender. It’s that epic album ending feeling, perfect. I’ll never get tired of a band that knows how to end an album. The whole thing is a journey. I was going to comment on how tastefully short the album is but it’s just shy of a full hour. That’s really the ultimate, to make the thing seem go faster than it does. An hour with no boring parts.

Negatives: no idea what any of these songs are about. I’ve even a lyrics booklet and uh…no I don’t really care what all the words are. It is what it is. I mean, even the title only works as a pun if you have a Swedish accent. (“obscene”?) Really. And the artwork of course. Kinda dumb. Like, what was that video. But who cares about that stuff? Oh, most people? Well, their loss.

Still need to get the new one. Missed seeing them live last week. Stupid. Broke again. %