Published on Jan 24, 2000
I’d like to think that in all the years I’ve listened to heavy
metal, I’ve heard the angriest forms of music that man could ever
come up with. But sometimes, even that can be taken to too far of
an extreme.
Take the self-titled debut release from Amen, for example. This
is 14 tracks of brutal, naked anger that the band tries to channel
through their instruments. One problem, though – you have to have
some kind of a safety valve when playing with such a combustible
combination, and Amen have yet to learn how to try and balance out
the anger.
Oh, don’t get me wrong; I know that Amen – vocalist Casey Chaos
(where
do they think of these names?), guitarists S. Mayo and Paul
Fig, bassist Tumor, John and drummer Larkin – went all-out to
capture the absolute fury that they feel. They shout, scream, pound
on their instruments and make every conceivable noise known to rock
music in the process – and the end result, while musical in some
semblance, is pretty hard to listen to.
Part of it seems to be that Amen rejects everything that is
modern-day society, writing them off as evils that must be stomped
like a cockroach. Tracks like “Coma America,” “Unclean,” “TV Womb”
and “No Cure For The Pure” all seem to point in that direction – at
least what I could decipher from Chaos’s balls-in-a-blender
screams.
There are two major problems with
Amen that I can hear. First, the band needs to realize that
a constant sonic attack on the listener will eventually lead them
to start tuning out the message – and this is the opposite effect
of what Amen wanted to accomplish. Even a band like Rage Against
The Machine realizes that you have to occasionally push the
“depressurize” button to kind of bring the listener back to some
level of status quo before you go after the jugular.
The second problem – and this is the fatal mistake that the band
makes – is that they don’t seem focused enough on the music to make
the album that effective. Instead, it sounds like the sessions were
used to pound out the tracks and to be a form of primal scream
therapy. I mean, if I wanted to hear things like that, I’d go pick
up the first solo albums from John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
This is all a shame, because somewhere in the haze of pissed-off
aggression and full-throttle sloppy playing, I do hear potential
for Amen to release an album that will knock people out of their
shoes. Unfortunately, this isn’t it.
2000 Christopher Thelen and “The Daily Vault”. All rights
reserved. Review or any portion may not be reproduced without
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Roadrunner Records, and is used for information purposes only.