dan's jams - music reviews

What a brilliant, complex, challenging album.

I had been looking forward to this album ever since discovering and falling in love with their previous disc, "They're Only Chasing Safety". That album was rich in metallic melody and dual-attack singing (some screaming, some singing), and a free-yet-controlled song structure writing style. All of those elements are in attendance here on the new one, except that that song structures are even freer. At times, when I hear them phase through pre-verses, verses, post-verses, pre-bridges, bridges, post-bridges, pre-choruses, choruses, post-choruses…I can't help but think of Metallica's "Ride the Lightning" or "Master of Puppets", in that every song on those albums was characterized by many distinct riff patterns (where normal radio "hits" generally have 3 or 4 distinct parts, those songs have in excess of 10). Why does that matter? It gives that music an enormous advantage in longevity over "hit"-based songs. Ask anyone who loves those two Metallica albums. 20 years later, most of them still do love those albums (and this is the primary reason why "old-school" Metallica fans generally hold such disdain for everything since the black album).

I must admit though, that it took me several listens to really get into this disc as a whole. At least 10 passes through, actually. This is so much more than your standard mallcore fare. Certainly, those familiar with the idea of mallcore (melodic metal stretched over extended punk structures and scream/sing vocals) can make a valid comparison between that and this, but to pigeonhole "Define the Great Line" as merely that would do it a monumental injustice. As you take the whole disc in as a whole, you'll find a multitude of interconnected-yet-unique songs parts that consistently sum up to whole songs of driving passion, journeys of chaotic cohesion, and consistently uplifting meaning.

"You're Ever So Inviting" is a prime example of everything mentioned so far in this review. It starts on what amounts to a pre-chorus, into a chorus that builds on itself, and into a verse within the first 35 seconds. By my count, this song has at least 7 stylistically and structurally diverse parts (each of those parts containing anywhere from 2 to 5 different patterns) en route to making a song that is surprisingly cohesive. They have no fear twisting a riff from a straightforward thrashing riff into a syncopated mutation to set up a half-time mosh-part. And it WORKS. It's not very often that you get this kind of songwriting skill. Dive in.