hit and miss
i've swung so wildly on this disc that it's hard to even order the thoughts. i think i've conjured up a basic idea, though.
suppose you approach it as a singular whole, as an album that cannot be modified - which, to be clear, is how it ought to be approached in an absolute sense. from this perspective, i'd have to say that, if there's another record out there with so much blown potential, i'm not sure what it is. it begins with two ridiculously powerful pieces of epic rock that are maybe a bit more conventional than an old fan would expect but are no less satisfying. it then collapses into a couple of boring folk songs and a pretty generic doom/grunge thing before bouncing back a bit with a throwback track that, as is often the case with throwback tracks, seems haphazardly thrown together, even in it's epic haze.
suppose, though, that you simply remove the third and fifth tracks from the disc. what is left is a record of four lengthy tracks that is arguably on par with the previous disc. the grading consequently comes with a very deep caveat: removing those two particularly awful misses produces a pretty big hit. half of me wants to overlook it, but it's just that the misses miss so badly....
thankfully, this disc represents the end of their folk phase, and i really don't know what they were thinking. then again, i don't know what any of the creative artists that felt the need to explore folk, of all things, were thinking around '05 or so. it was popular. trendy. ok. however, the audience such a thing can attract is very fickle (and not particularly suited for propaganda purposes). the nature of the mid noughties folk craze is practically the definition of fickle, trendy nonsense. how it was able to ensnare so many otherwise forward-thinking artists, i don't know; it was upper class, latte-drinking, small-business-supporting, pro-capitalist conservative-liberal shit, more or less the antithesis of what this band seemed to be. i suppose that breaks with the past are meant to be dramatic, but they need not be contradictory; did it cross their mind, at any point, that smashing the state had given way to playing for petty bourgeois aristocrats in thrown together courtyards.....? so, what were they thinking when they recorded an ironically perfect straight-to-starbucks classic like "horses in the sky" or a frat-house sing-along like "hang on to each other"? well, i suppose i answered my own question. unfortunately...
teddy roosevelt's guns is a different issue. thematically, this is interesting. i'll even admit a partiality to the mood they go with, as well as the general aesthetic of disconnected dreariness. yet, it seems like it was thrown together. it's filler. we don't really expect filler from this act and are a little confused by it when we find it. it's something similar for the last track, which is musically partially recycled from the last proper gybe! disc. there's a very good idea here, but it seems hampered by a refusal to break with the band's own conventions. what i'm trying to get across is a level of predictability. now, that being said, a casual listener may not even notice this; it may only really be apparent upon a close analysis of their entire discography, after listening to it fairly intensely for six years (at the time of release; nearly 15 at the time of this writing). this track is successful, but it's a little tired. can't win with me, can you? well, they pivoted massively on their next record...
i've previously alluded to the influence i may have had on the band, and have to wonder if the imagery in the second part of the last track (imagine the view as they bounce shit off the satellites) has anything to do with the cover art attached to a demo i sent their label. i think this is pushing it, though. substantially...
so, what is so special about the first two tracks, then? god saves our dead marines sounds sort of like freddie mercury delving into slavic folk, or perhaps roma ("gypsy") music. operatic grandeur has been replaced by an existential peasant angst that meditates on how fucked up the world around us is, making specific reference to some sneaky tactics the canadian government was using to hide it's war dead, but it's fundamentally a perverted queen tune. this opens up into an ambient second track, as many of their more upbeat tracks tend to, which presents some moral questions about the extant conflict in the levant from an anti-zionist jewish perspective. "this is their busted future, and this is our dream. which one do you believe in?". it's a remarkably powerful, gut-wrenching 21 minutes of music that really has few parallels. stop reading this and go listen to it...
despite the high points, as high as they are, the record lacks cohesion, as a whole. perhaps extraordinary goals require extraordinary results? you can't skip over this in the band's catalog, nor should you, but you need to prepare yourself to wonder what the fuck they were thinking.
stream:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnpQFjefXCROaSni7C2oteYu1PyWP5ywx
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/ASilverMtZion/2005-HorsesInTheSky/index.html