Mosquito

Mosquito is quite a departure from the mind-twisting phantasmagorias that were the previous two Psychotic Waltz albums. This one is more hard rocking and laid back, with groovy guitars, soothing choirs and vocal melodies that have more in common with Alice in Chains than Fates Warning (I've always heard vague similarities between AiC and PW, but here, they are particularly prominent). Really, if AiC had released this album in between Dirt and the s/t, it would fit in their discography like a glove. Sure, there's still that weirdness and psychedelia that characterized A Social Grace and Into the Everflow, but it's much more mellow and toned down in favor of space rock/funk/reggae-like relaxation and upbeatness.

While there's nothing wrong with this kind of music, I can't say that this album is particularly captivating. No sonically evoked landscapes or any sort of potent atmosphere like in the band's previous works. And while the band was going for a more accessible approach and the album is somewhat catchy, it's not catchy enough to constantly pull me in. Yes, it's a cool album for a while, but becomes a chore after the fourth song or so. Doesn't help that the songs are rather repetitive and not at all progressive. But worst of all, the more times you listen to this album, the plainer and blander it sounds. A stark contrast to the inaccessible but high-calorie and long-lasting debut.

Mosquito suffers from just about the same issues as AiC's s/t does. There are somewhat visceral songs such as the title track or Dancing in the Ashes, but pretty much every other song is too sluggish for its own good. The exception is Haze One, which is gloomy yet oddly warm, and with atmosphere that the rest of the album lacks (but even here, it lacks potency and staying power). Though on the polar opposite we have Locked Down which, despite (or precisely because of) its liveliness and rockiness comes off as mildly annoying and sounds like a Facelift reject more than anything else.

The last song is also quite anticlimactic. In an of itself, it's an okay space rockish tune, but it features two full minutes of silence towards the end that lead to a dungeon synth piece similar to one of Morbid Angel's cheesier interludes. If this was an attempt to catch the listener off guard or something, it fails, since I doubt anyone would leave the album playing after the silence kicks in, unless they knew for a fact that the song is not over yet, in which case the silence become a mere tedium. See Blind Guardian's The Maiden and the Minstrel Knight for this kind of a false ending pulled off effectively.

I suppose it's a great album to smoke pot/do mushrooms and chill out/trip to, but other than that, it's better to stick to the first two. Though grunge and stoner rock enthusiasts will most certainly dig the hell out of it.

While Into the Everflow didn't wanna die either young or old but still wanted its time to come, Mosquito is a condensed version of its predecessor, with more funk rock experimentation. It could be described as alterna-prog metal. This is a band aware of what's happening around them and desiring success yet hindered or helped (depending on your POV) by their tendencies towards metal and prog and their differing ideals. Clearly they wanted to write shorter, more accessible material but they did not sell out. Their name is Psychotic Waltz, think about that for a moment.

Lovestone Blind is a song that should have been a hit. The lyrics are ridiculous but I'm sure they mean something to Buddy. Speaking of Buddy, he identified more with the grunge bands of the time and the classic rock that inspired them than the '80s metal his bandmates identified more with. This was something that came through in their sound. However, there was some crossover between him and the others. It was actually Buddy that wrote the heaviest track on here in Locked Down and Dan that wrote the completely un-metal Darkness.

All the differing ideals cause this album (like both of its predecessors) to wander around so much but occasionally the guys would go, "Hey wait a minute, we're a metal band, aren't we?" At these times we got highlights in the previously mentioned Locked Down and Dancing in the Ashes. The latter song is the most speed metal thing this band would ever do in their post-Aslan/Burn the Night days. Other highlights are Shattered Sky which is a different kind of heavy with great lyrics. Only Time alternates between psyched out doom metal and Hendrixy space funk. All the Voices has some neat keyboard/flute intricacies and, well, lots of voices from Buddy. Every song on this album is good, with fuzzy riffs and nimble leads of some sort in all of them. Those leads are more subtle here compared to the way they dominated much of the band's earlier material. When these guys wanted to write catchy little tunes they were damn good at it.

The first couple minutes of Mindsong evokes images of an island paradise. The effect is achieved through exotic clean guitars, sequencing and percussion. This paradise is not a happy one though, we're seeing the sun go down through a depressed POV. The ending of both this song and album bothers me. New ideas pop up at the end but fade out, undeveloped. What follows is a couple minutes of silence then we get the scary-as-fuck Darkness instrumental. Other bands have done this too, I think its fucking stupid. Check out Skyclad's The Silent Whales of Lunar Sea for a cool way to do a hidden bonus track.

This time around the metal is more integrated into the background but still present, even if vaguely, on everything but Mindsong. Whereas on Everflow the metal was too often completely absent. Mosquito is easier to digest than its predecessors being that it's simple, at least by Psychotic Waltz standards which is still more technical than the average. This is not as good as Grace or Bleeding but just right for when you're in the mood for something different. Ugly artwork though, WTF?

After creating 2 masterpieces of complex and technical progressive metal with ‘A Social Grace’ and ‘Into the Everflow’, many Psychotic Waltz fans were disappointed with their third release, ‘Mosquito’. Although Psychotic Waltz had always had psychedelic influences in their music, leading their unique style to be dubbed ‘hippie metal’ by some fans, it was only here that the progressive influences that overpowered their older work were almost completely abandoned and replaced with far a more noticeable psychedelic sound than before. If Syd Barrett had continued making music after leaving Pink Floyd and made a metal album, it would probably sound like this.

The intricate progressive epics had been replaced with a much simpler sound with traditional song structures, and obvious verse-chorus arrangements. However, despite the more accessible catchy ‘pop’ sound and accusations of Psychotic Waltz selling out, ‘Mosquito’ still sounds fantastic.

‘Mosquito’ is much more mellow than their older albums. Although there were calm sections in ‘Into the Everflow’, this whole album has a very laid back atmosphere - it’s metal that you can relax to. Synths are used a lot more than before and sometimes even a flute to enhance the calm atmosphere. Even the lyrics have been simplified, though they are still much weirder than most, with a psychedelia theme running throughout the album.

This sound is largely due to the strange production, which Scott Burns (who has worked with bands such as Death and Atheist) worked on. The production gives it a down-tempo, doomy sound. While this helps with the more mellow songs, it does hinder a few songs that should be much heavier, making them sound slightly too weak. Saying that, the album opens brilliantly with the title track, the liveliest track on the album with a great riff running throughout. This song really demonstrates the potential of the band’s new simpler sound, taking away the meandering atmospheric sections and concentrating instead on a more concise typical metal style.

The problem is that these more metal songs don’t completely fit with the rest of the album, making it sound slightly disjointed. Mostly it tries to create a relaxed feeling but the title track and ‘Dancing In The Ashes’ come in all of a sudden, sounding out of place when put next to the calmer songs. As only a few of the 11 tracks (including the very pointless hidden track) are like this it doesn’t get in the way too much, but it probably would have sounded a lot better if they had replaced these songs with other mellower tracks instead.

As always with Psychotic Waltz, the musicianship is superb. The band members are easily capable of handling the new simpler songs and managed to adapt to their new style well, writing some excellent and memorable melodies. The biggest weakness of the band this time is surprisingly, after listening to their first 2 albums, their singer, Buddy Lackey. On ‘Mosquito’ his singing is much more restrained and calm than before, not using much for his incredible vocal range. Sometimes his voice sounds drowned out because of the production and on the more metal sections especially his voice sometimes has a nasally tone to it.

While it doesn’t have the dark haunting atmosphere of ‘Into the Everflow’, or the amazing technical musicianship of ‘A Social Grace’, ‘Mosquito’, while slightly inconsistent and arguably their worst release does have a much more accessible sound that even non-metal fans might enjoy.

Generally considered as their most commercial album, the songs are actually overall simpler. On the other hand the production has gained quality. The thrashy atmosphere of the first two releases and the experimental mood from “Into the everflow” is gone, but the other remaining PW trademarks make this CD a worthy buy. The songs are shorter and groovier (i.e. “Lovestone blind”, “Shattered Sky”). “Haze one” describes the silence in the tour bus after a gig, leaving behind just a diffuse emptiness …”Shattered Sky” is one of my personal favorites of PW, combining a “waltzing” rhythm of the mighty drums with the special guitar sound of Brian and Dan, well suited by the magnificent intense vox of Buddy. “All the voices” sounds like deep space, “Dancing in the ashes” is quite a speed piece and “Only time” has a psychic touch. The “Mindsong” resembles “Into the everflow” material with its spacy beginning and psychedelic second part (for those of you who like Wahwahs).