Black Umbrella

Now here’s a record I’ve meant to review for quite a while. I procured this obscure oddity when Metal Blade had a nice sale with a bunch of CDs for $0.99 (A.K.A. OSS’ weird crap spendathon), and it is easily one of my favourites of the 20-30 records I bought there (probably behind only Divine Regale’s sublime Ocean Mind).

While I believe their earlier material was a strange progressive art-metal freak out, by the time they reached Black Umbrella this group of overly-brainy musical chameleons had locked into a strange and unique blend of alternative, hardcore, and bone-shaking volume. The lyrics (supplied by vocalist Brent Oberlin) are steeped in a sort of deeply ironic nihilism, sorrowful odes to loves lost and imagined and sardonic indictments of the stupidity of modern people and modern lives, all delivered by a rubber voice that’s brimming over with character. Oberlin alternates between a smooth talky delivery and highly emotive singing and the occasional raging hardcore scream. He’s not a particularly technically gifted singer (although his falsetto on “24 Hours Ago” is damned amusing), but he finds the perfect voice for what needs to come across.

The album on the whole has an interesting duality, almost as if it was structured to be played like an old vinyl, with two separate and distinct sides. The first side is fairly light post-punk, not a style I’m particularly fond of but one that is handled quite capably on such tracks as the humorous and melodically dense “Tragic Juliet” (“I adore you/can’t wait to meet you”), and not so well on the nearly intolerably fey “Blue”. Track five, “Bitter” somewhat prepares you for the hammerhead aggression of the second part of the album, but it isn’t until after the semi-epic (and fully captivating) “December 10th” that we really crank up the violence.

“Her Rusty Nail” touches on the style of the earlier tracks, but these choppy chords seem lead-poisoned and darkened, the whole track like the cynical grin of an ambivalent corpse, particularly on the anthemic refrain: “Heil! Ooh yeah girlfriend!”. I agree, that sounds like just about the most pop-punky crap imaginable, but the thing fairly drips with sarcasm and disgust, Oberlin well aware of the insipidness of the phrase he satirizes. It’s followed by the hellish metal one-two punch of “Pink Dumbo” (death-shrouded Sabbatherian stomp with a monster solo) and “Swank” (absolutely vicious metal on all accounts, with a hellish vocal).

The heavy tracks on this album have an almost shocking amount of violence, these goofy wiseacres cutting loose and spewing pure vitriol at a captive audience. Barring black metal and extreme hardcore, very few heavy musics have the kind of naked harshness of the white-noise fury of the riffing in “Swank” and “Earwig”. Some of it is how these tracks seem to ride some sort of arcane jetstream out of the clear blue skies of the earlier tracks, some of it is the raw production which takes what Metallica was looking for in St. Anger (razor-sharp guitars and steely drums) without the shitty sound and anemic tone that band ended up with. And some of it is just that the music itself is nasty, ugly, and headbang-worthy in its own right.

One of the hallmarks of a great band is diversity, and Thought Industry demonstrates that quite thoroughly on tracks like “Earwig”, with its beautiful acoustic intro and trippy electronic window-dressing, and the elegiac “December 10th” with its mournful piano, brilliant vocal melodies, and big heavy power chords. In all, this is a very accomplished piece of work from a band that has brains without pretension, wit without silliness, and talent without recognition.

Highlights: “Pink Dumbo”, “December 10th”, “Edward Smith”