Unnatural Selection

Flotsam And Jetsam went through turbulent times during the 1990s, thanks to metal music's negligence. Also, the band lost the founding member, guitarist Michael Gilbert after the previous album, 'High', together with the drummer Kelly Smith. Talk about hardship!

The band had brought the groove metal influence into their music earlier, but here it really is at its strongest (like on the next one, 'My God'). I have never managed to get into 'High' fully, even though it has gotten a bit better during the years in my book; I still think it is the worst album released by F&J (together with 'My God'). So, I was fearing what they would bring up next...

'Unnatural Selection' was a tough one for me, again. I liked some of the songs immediately, but some did take loads of listening to. Loads... I found it way more energetic than 'High'; the band had gained some drive probably thanks to the new members, namely Mark Simpson (guitarist from rock bands, or something) and Craig Nielsen (drummer, don't really known his history, except that he was one of the candidates for Megadeth's drummer after Nick Menza left). Anyway, this felt somewhat better already after the first listen. There's still guitarist Edward Carlson and his good soloing, and of course unique vocalist, Erik A. Knutsen!

This album was a faster job than usually, more spontaneous, thanks to the turbulent times. The band managed to create some damn catchy songs. Another trait for most of them is the drive; they are bulldozing at their most driving! They do have twists and turns, too. Well, these are more than suitable due to the lyrics themes like chemical and liquid addictions; especially the vocals add this vibe of haze and oddity, but so do also math-beats and vortex riffage. There are rather lame guitar sounds and techniques, that probably try to emulate Dimebag Darrell, but also some memorable and fine leads and solos. Jason Ward's bass is commanding and clanking. There's quite a lot happening in the drumming, with tasty tricks here and there.

This isn't like a twin brother with Anthrax's 1995 album 'Stomp 442', but they are like reminiscent cousins: Belligerent, mischievous and repellent, some think so in a positive way, and others the opposite way for sure. This is no jump-da-fuck-up-metal either, but much more a vibrant and wicked beast; still partly groove metal but with dark-toned heavy metal, and also a pinch of thrash metal; in all it is one damn unique album. At the best the songs are excellent (e.g. 'Chemical Noose', 'Liquid Noose' and 'Brain Dead'), at their worst, still good. 'Fuckers' is just bloody pungent and not stupid at all with its torrid spite. 'Welcome to the Bottom' is the calmest song on the album with its acoustics and emotive vocals.

Erik A.K.'s vocals are pretty good here. He feels energetic and powerful, but also acts by the lyrics and goes a bit nutcase at times. His voice works, and doesn't feel exhausted like on some F&J albums. Some of the choruses are catchy-as-heck, others go into that freak territory. The lyrics are about lives gone haywire, and they suit in perfectly. This album does have some fucking street cred! The cover art looks cool for a guy who loves old bug monster movies, and is a good metaphor.

The sound is a bit musty. Everything is mixed up to the front here, so I think it's perhaps two clashing guitars that cause this. It's not a album-breaking thing, but does sound stuffy in some stereos, as I've noticed. Generally, the sound is also warm, and above all, heavy. But it certainly isn't polished, as the album was rapidly done.

Even though 'My God' took dive again after this one, still the unnatural selection (of the music business, that is) for bands was favourable for this gang and Flotsam And Jetsam did survive the tempestuous 1990s, where metal music was not a big thing at all. And we've been served some ardent (thrash) metal since, especially in 2010s. Anyway, 'Unnatural Selection' is a small gem sandwitched between two album, that merely have a couple of better songs on them.

(Originally written for ArchaicMetallurgy.com)

Being on a Flotsam diet these past few days… listening to their last two outings, above all; largely the self-titled. The Flotsams… the unrealized Arizona dream… I wonder if their saga had been the main inspiration behind Emir Kusturica’s film of the same title; which also appeared very timely, by the way, in 1993… kidding here of course, but the truth is that Eric A.K. and Co. never made it to the upper echelon. It’s true that fate (read colleagues of theirs from the Bay-Area) rudely interfered shortly after they started, by snatching their gifted bass player Jason Newsted, but this didn’t stop them from smacking the excellent “No Place for Disgrace” right after.

What hurt them the most was the third charm, this stormy opus with which the band joined this small but intriguing group (Death Angel, Mordred, Wrathchild America) of thrash-diversifying pioneers from their homeland, who tried to exorcise the genre’s aggressive skeleton in the early-90’s with various mellower condiments… it didn’t work. What worked much better was the conformist’s gesture they offered after it, the heavy post-thrashy “Quatro” which followed The Black Album down an already traversed road, one that seemed to suit them well. Sure, but if you don’t take the most of the flexible transformational 90’s, what kind of an artist are you? Keep trying new things, and before you know it, the guys erected this “Drift”, this groovy rocky/metalish oddity that sounded too tepid to be considered a high. The actual high came two year later, naturally titled “High”… kidding some more, this effort was another embarrassment, a rowdier but scattered quasi-thrashy assembly that was too sloppy to be viewed a return to the roots.

A very fluctuating trajectory the Flotsam’s 90’s career, (un)naturally leading to this selection here… one that I also confidently purchased back then. So what’s on offer that we should be selecting from it? Well, this is the band’s most groove-oriented achievement. In this train of thought, if released right after “Quatro”, it would have been way more effective. However, coming after two all-over-the-place outings, it’s difficult to praise it sky-high as obviously, after the headless-chicken-like wandering around the metal spectre the guys indulged in, they found nothing better but to find solace in the 90’s trends… once again… at the end of the decade when it became only too clear that the days of the aggro/groovy/post-thrash generation were numbered.

Exorcising some more groovy spirits? Yep, but for the last time, the band promise, as they rush in to display their post-thrashy vigour with the belligerent “Dream Scrape”, a fittingly rowdy inauguration which could have been left out of the “Quatro” sessions for reasons… unknown, and by all means unnatural. With arguably the finest number crossed off the list, the guys switch on a full-on groove mode and pledge blind allegiance to the ruling vogues, painting a stroke after stroke in their façade, sometimes roughing it with a more aggressive noose around its neck (“Chemical Noose”), sometimes making things more memorable with a sing-along one (“Liquid Noose”). The memorability factor isn’t low, “Promise Keepers”, for instance, is another instant groovy hit, but this is an entirely different universe, where a place for disgrace can easily be found, either with dragging boring pseudo-doomsters (“Fuckers”), or with inept goofy, also read groovy, rockers (“Falling”), the parade too one-dimensionally focused on the trendy at the time sounds, “Welcome to the Bottom” actually lifting it from the bottom at the end, being a nice heavy ballad with echoes of the “Quatro” again.

Naturally selected for survival after this one? Hm… and this is where the real polemics lies: regardless of how much respect one could accumulate towards those acts (Kreator, Overkill, Sodom, Megadeth, Testament, etc.) who never split-up during the 90’s but tried to adapt to whatever was rocking the metal boat at the time, the fact remains that neither of them could even come close to producing a masterpiece during this period. They surrendered to vogues, then brought back some of their roots for debatable mish-mashes, then tried to shed their skin beyond recognition… adaptation was the name of the game for a prolonged stretch of time; one that our Arizona dreamers here also chose to play. With the game coming to an end at the end of the 90’s, were these outfits fit for survival?

I should answer yes; cause to emerge scathed but alive from the groovy game is a feat of some sorts… as long as you consciously choose to detach yourself from it, in a timely manner. The album here was therapeutic to an extent; the band never attempted such a faithful emulation of the 90’s movement. How sincere the latter was is again debatable, but at least it didn’t sink the band’s ship deep, never to be found. It was way more than flotsam & jetsam that survived for the dawn of the new millennium which was met with the decidedly better, marginally more thrash-fixated “My God”. However, it took another four years, on the loftier “Dreams of Death”, for the audience to see clearly that the guys were embarking on a restoration campaign… one that seemed like stumbling (“The Cold”, “Ugly Noise”) for a bit, but one that has found its logical old school stride on the last two instalments. More stumbling stunts scheduled for the future? Possibly; but it matters little now… cause we know that the fitter will rise and will carry on… the weaker will be left behind and forgotten.

Unnatural Selection has a bit of a bad rap for incorporating notable elements of the groove metal that was popular in the mid 90s, but I have to say that it's at least better than the three albums leading up to it. The band's second album after returning to the Metal Blade stable, it suffered somewhat from not having any relevance to what was going on in its day, and thus a general lack of interest, since the Gothic/fairy metal, melodeath and metalcore scenes were really vaulting into the stratosphere. There was also a bit of redundancy here to the lyrics, a lot focusing around personal addictions ("Liquid Noose", "Chemical Noose", etc). In general they're quite bad, with one song ("Fuckers") particularly awkward and embarrassing, but Flotsam and Jetsam were never strong in this department, and just about everything scripted from When the Storm Comes Down on could have used revision, even if the actual subjects were appropriate.

A lot of the groove elements hit up front, with "Dream Scrape" hammering out some rhythmic bounce circa Sepultura's Chaos A.D. and a dense, funky bass tone that is more than a little reminiscent of Korn, if not as utterly dominant. The second song here, "Chemical Noose" might as well be a Prong song, it uses the same percussive sense of harmonics and muted thrashing momentum that would have placed it comfortably on, say, Beg to Differ if not for the lyrics. A little ironic, considering their former bassist Troy Gregory had joined that band. However, what I found appreciable about this album were the catchy vocal lines conceived by Eric A.K. and the gang. There's a lot of melody and passion to songs like "Brain Dead" and "Promise Keepers" which shows that those years spent flirting with the mainstream on Cuatro or Drift were not entirely wasted. In particular, that latter song has an interesting fluctuation of Pantera groove and these ethereal male choirs in the chorus that feels totally unexpected.

The guitar lines are also quite creative here, a mix of hard rock, thrash and even some semi industrial or post-hardcore sounding structures that obviously were pretty well thought out even when they don't completely deliver the goods. New drummer Craig Nielsen stepped in for Kelly David Smith (who has since returned), and his busy rock beats are a good match for Jason Ward's thick, plunking bass. The leads are frivolous and rarely memorable, but I feel like there's a more distinctly 'thrash' feel to this record that trumps its predecessors between 1992-1997 even if it still relies on some degree of accessibility. Knutson's work here is pretty catchy, with the possible exceptions of "Falling" where it seems a little more melodic than necessary and of course the aforementioned "Fuckers", which is one of those lame ranting songs that seems, to the audience, targeted to no particular individual, but to the band probably a critic or backstabbing friend or ex-girlfriend. The lyrics suck, the boring grooves supporting it suck, and it should have been left off.

On the whole, though, I found myself playing the songs in my head more repeatedly than any others since maybe "The Master Sleeps", so I can't claim that Unnatural Selection is quite so miserable as it's oft made out to be. A lot of the riffs are dead weight, I couldn't care less about some of the groovier tunes like "Dream Scrape" or the slow burn of closer "Welcome to the Bottom", but a few tunes like "Brain Dead" are loaded. Not a triumphant return to form, but it's certainly not scraping the bottom of the barrel either like its all too mediocre successor...

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

Yuck!

What a deplorable sounding album! I guess every one seems to have a hick up from time to time, but you know what, as a fan of Flotsam fright from the get-go, I feel somewhat cheated with this album. This is more like something that I would've expected from the likes of Metallica or some other has been band...not Flotsam!

Anyway, the problem here stems from 3 specific areas. All three of these topics I must add, will be covered in great detail;

1. The songs themselves, pretty much all suck. A few good riffs, and very few memorable hooks, but overall this album just doesn't deliver the goods. And the lyrics, Marble, Cheddar, or Mozza, regardless its all CHESSE!

2. The production. It almost sounds as if this album was recorded prior to their debut, but that's not the case. This album is actually 13 long years after their debut. By this point in their career, the band had released some killer sounding albums, such as Drift, Cuatro, and even High sounded better than this. It's fair to say that the money that a label gives you to record an album, should not be spent on crack.

3. Lastly, the performances. And to be completely honest with you, its not really the whole band, but rather the ear shrieking sound of AK in certain songs, and the sub par guitar duo of Mark Simpson and Ed Carlson. If your lead work is gonna be hacked to that extreme, then hire someone else to play the guitar solos...oh yeah I forgot, all the money got spent on crack. And it shows boys!