Maximumrocknroll 303 - August 2008

During the initial listen, I was annoyed by the first song. "Shit, another one of these bands." Maybe I should stick to old favorites in the morning before I drink my coffee. And maybe I should have only been assigned this one record for the month so I could try to fully understand it. Post initial-listen of side one led me to believe this record lay somewhere between side two of MY War and NEU!'s 2. Second listen of the first side complimented my original thoughts with "this record would fit in well alongside the early Gravity Records releases." I was a fan of Gravity when the label and I were younger, partly because it released fucked-up (not the band) records that sounded weird and different. That's hardly an adequate description of the current platter, but like a long driver, the first step is pulling out of the driveway. Side two is similar to the first: slow and plodding, heavy and repetitive, riffs that just get pounded into your head, much weirder or different than anything I've listened to in a long time. I wonder how RSO writes songs. "Okay, part one, that riff...we'll play it 32 times, then...OK, we'll just play the next song." I believe there are a plethora of indie rock bands (DEAD MEADOW unfortunately comes to mind) that play similar slow and heavy music, but while that shit comes off as pretentious and vapid, this comes off as genuinely desperate and grabs you by the throat. Most of these songs are really slow and heavy and drawn-out, but the first one is something of a rocker. They incorporate...a theremin? What is that? Something that makes their already fucked-up that much more fucked-up. The recording is a little muddy but it's a nice mud. This is not background music, and it's not music for lovers of friends. This record occupies and dominated your attention. Cool cover art to complete the package--a CD with two bonus trackes included with the first 500 copies of the LP. (VL)