Manic Frustration

or should it be “picking strawberries under the mushroom skies”? Nevermind that, but I can clearly see why this recording (manically) frustrated so many fans back then… but at the same time I remember that Metal Hammer gave it an inordinately high score, and made it album of the month, among other accolades… and the situation wasn’t radically different in the other magazines around the world. Well, you know very well that the media, as the front face of every conspiracy, is supposed to propagate metamorphosis and transformation whenever those start gestating… and it had to give its support in the spawning of the stoner/doom metal movement which owes a lot to the album reviewed here, alongside Kyuss’ “Wretch” and, to a lesser extent, Sleep’s “Volume One”.

Yeah, doom metal wasn’t going to be the same after 1992… first these troublemakers infested it with all kinds of hallucinogenic, psychedelic mushrooms; then the leaders Candlemass diversified it with condiments like power and progressive on “Chapter VI”. But fair play to that as both branches proved quite fruitful in the years to come, forming strong lasting waves that still rise to a tsunami-like stature nowadays.

But back to this frustration here… yes, it was frustration for me as I got so much in love with the razor-sharp fast-paced metal the band started playing from “Run to the Light” onward… and I don’t even want to mention how fond I was of their earlier doom-laden tactics. The whole package appealed to me like nothing else out there… until one hot July… sorry, June morning I bumped into a bunch of mushrooms in the nearby forest… pulling your leg here; it was Eric Wagner who did this bumping... and since he wasn’t careful where he was stepping, a cloud of psychedelic smoke rose from the ruined mushrooms and… the rest, as they say, is history.

This fateful encounter in the forest changed the music scenery a lot as those substances worked their magic on the other band members, too, and before you know it, they all started seeing, greeting, and also touching the strawberry skies above; entered unfathomable memory’s gardens, and started seeing all misters around dressed in white… regular takers say that the first stage from a hallucinogens’ consumption session is to try and touch the sky…

and here it comes “Come Touch the Sky”, a psychedelic rocker second-to-none with everyone pleasantly stoned, with Wagner unleashing this impossibly infectious high-strung timbre that is not radically different from his previous vocal exploits, but here it’s sometimes helped by a covert synthesized blend. Leftovers (“The Sleeper”) from the band’s rowdier past are inevitably served, and generally the dynamics is quite big excluding the bluesy doomster “Fear”, the romantic ballad “Rain” and the excellent atmospheric The Beatles-esque closer “Breathe…” the last two embellished by Wagner’s very cool more tamed antics. Quite a few memorable tunes as well: try to forget the choruses on “Memory's Garden” and “Mr. White”, or the lyrical escapades on “Tragedy Man”, not to mention the bouncy near-headbanging layout on “Hello Strawberry Skies”, the highlight here and another nod at the band's earlier more aggressive shenanigans.

A surprising but cool package that doesn’t sound like a drastic metamorphosis, the spacey abrasive vibe of the guitars and Wagner’s goofier approach to singing the main innovations. At the time this album came out it was already clear to everyone that Trouble were not a stringent doom metal act anymore, but this new offering saw the return of some of this heavy clout from the earlier days only served with a hefty doze of psychedelics and hallucinogens. An interesting recipe which had seen its ingredients already introduced to an extent on Kyuss’ mentioned debut, but here they get picked by a veteran on the scene, a benevolent contagion which arguably gave less gravity and more air-headedness to their repertoire… largely in a good way, mind you, as the change of the guard in the early-90’s clearly showed that new sounds would enter the audience’s psyche, and might as well cause benign mutations. Some adapted more successfully to the new demands, some less.

In the Trouble case it meant splashing a huge plastic, opium-eating green head in the midst of the 90’s with the follow-up, a very faithful sequel to the album here. From Mr. White to Mr. Greenman, not a very big shift, by no means in the music department either, with the same (non)forbidden substances influencing the musicians’ minds, placing them more firmly within the stoner/doom metal context which swiftly got enriched with other, mostly UK outfits (Acrimony, Cathedral, Spiritual Beggars, Electric Wizard, etc.) and became a major player on the 90’s mushroom field. However, one of its instigators showed no interest in propagating it any further largely due to Wagner’s losing interest in the music business. Exhorder’s Kyle Thomas was seen replacing the guy for a couple of live shows in the early-00’s, but it was Wagner all over again as the band braced themselves for the release of a comeback opus of some sorts, “Simple Mind Condition” (2007), an album quite long in the makings and one that failed to deliver in the expected way as the guys were never too sure whether they wanted to produce another tribute to the stoner metal/rock circuit or to return to their heavier, more doom-laden past.

That was it, Wagner was out to concentrate on his new endeavour The Skull, named after Trouble’s debut outing, thus ensuring his old comrades have a solid competition on the field, and with two full-lengths and an EP this new initiative is even closer to the vintage Trouble sound than Trouble’s own “The Distortion Field”, the last release of the band so far, with Kyle Thomas back to the fore. It would be interesting to watch this rivalry, to observe how it unfolds without any more psychedelic substances and hallucinogenic trips added… leave the mushrooms for the connoisseurs; they will never come back from the forest with a mind-altering harvest.

The 80's were gone, and the times were already changing. Metal music was changing as well, some for the better, some for the worst. In 1990 Trouble came out with their self-titled album and dropped the Christian themes. Little did they now that this would be Trouble's last good album. A lot of people hold Manic Frustration in high regards, but I can't really see why. Half of the album is decent, but it's just not Trouble.

One of the reason why this album is not Trouble is because it is not doom metal. Trouble hit it big in the 80's with their doom metal sound, but something happened. The band changed, switching to a psychedelic metal. In fact most of the songs have a semi-fast paced tempo. Most of the lyrics and themes for these songs have to deal with hallucinations and psychedelia. It's like somebody showed Wagner how to use drugs, altering the sound of Trouble in the 90's.

It sounds like I hate this album, but I don't hate it. It's got a lot of cool riffs, and in fact the distortion on the guitar solos is very unique to Trouble's style. The drummer does a good job keeping the tempo with something Trouble generally doesn't work with. Eric Wagner's vocal performance is good, but not his best. It sounds like old Trouble, vocally, but definitely not lyrically. The one song where his vocals suck is in the song Fear, which offers some distorted vocals, which in my honest opinion sucks. Why would you want to try and mask the vocals when they sound good to begin with?

Two main problems I have with this album are: the songs seem to blend into each other, like the next song continues to the next without any pause. This isn't necessarily bad, but it makes the music sound repetitive at times, which in itself can make the music boring. The other thing is that the music style has changed. There are only two songs that are slow. Rain is a very bad song that is kind of like a ballad. Breathe is an awesome Doom Metal song, probably the only one on this album and, at least for me, the best song on this album. If you like 80's Trouble you most likely won't like this album. If you are okay with heavy metal bands and changing then you should be fine with this album. Overall not bad, but just not the best.