Strapping Young Lad — City

I've lived with this album for a while now, I'm not exactly sure how long, but it had time to grow on me and reveal it's subtleties (yes, ultra-heavy, anger ridden, hyper-kinetic post thrash with industrial touches and, as an added bonus, SUBTLETIES!). My views of it are probably biased by the fact that I love the thing so much, but I'll try to describe it as objectively as I can (which is probably not enough for a testimony before the musical jury that you are).

*CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK* Ladies and gentlemen, welcome the fuck home!

The album opens with this sample of a metallic object hitting concrete and then goes directly into the main course: the big crunchy guitars (engineered by Daniel Bergstrand who gave the album a clear yet dirty, massive yet subtle sound), the bursts of superman-like drumming and Devy's seriously pissed off lyrics shouted with disturbing conviction (something not surprising if you consider that Devin was suffering from bipolar disorder at the time,or in layman terms, "Serious ANGER coming out of every orifices"). This first contact with the album is the intro-song "Velvet Kevorkian" which segues directly into "All Hail the New Flesh". The later is representative of the album as a whole; it contains catchy vocal melodies and riffs, insane drumming curtesy of Gene "the mean machine"Hoglan, Devin screaming at the top of his lungs "I'll see you pigs in hell!" and some weird documentary samples about "earthquakes and floods". I must tell you the whole thing is very cathartic!

The album also has some gentler moments like the Cop Shoot Cop cover of "Room 429" and "Spirituality" which is the album closer by excellence and leaves us on an introspective note (which offers nice closure for an album this blood pumping). Lyrically things aren't the typical metal discourse about dismembering dragons and women, it's more "urban", if I may say so, and talks about what goes on in Devin's mind, his world views and most of all: the things that piss him off! For example, the song Detox is about a bad mushroom trip and the lyrics goes like this:

How did I get here tonight?
What am I doing here?
How did I reach this state?
How did I lose my sight?
I'm lost
I'm freaking
And everybody knows
Everyone's watching
So here's all my hopes and aspirations
Nothing but puke
God, I'm so lonely

For those who have never heard the song, just reading the lyrics can make them seem like typical whiny ranting, but the actual emotional impact of the song (which is one of the catchiest on the album) makes the whole thing deeply personal and genuine (to the contrary of most of those so called "emotional" bands). Of course most of the rest of the album is way more angry and closer to the aural equivalent of "fuck you" than that excerpt, so those of you who are looking for a good ol' "standard" metal album should be warned: you will probably find City very dense and noisy at first as the breakneck speed of most songs can sometimes be too much when you're not used to it, but repeated listens make the fog clear and the songs will infect you like some incurable disease.

The bottom line is: if you are looking for something that will give you a glimpse of what post-metal might sound like, buy this!