For some reason I find myself thinking of King's X. I haven't listened to King's X since whenever it was they had that one hit, and this probably sounds nothing like King's X, but it's got that same pretentiousness. This is ponderous, portentous music made by people who are very good at playing their instruments, but who don't really understand music. And it's made for people who think they like music, but don't. For jerks who think guitar music started at Radiohead. These guys aspire to be the band that created "The Bends" without ever coming anywhere near the quality of that record. I don't think the singer has any idea what he's singing about most of the time; "And my heart spills on the ground" doesn't begin to make sense, no matter how many times it gets repeated. So go most of the songs: generalities, banalities, platitudes, cliches and mixed metaphors repeatedly yelped, sometimes sorta like Thom Yorke, sometimes sorta like Bono, sometimes sorta like Sebastian Bach (if only they did a cover of "18 and Life"). And maybe like that guy from King's X, who knows? "Yes we've lost ourselves." Thanks. Somewhere in there he's bearing crosses. "We've been dying since the day we were here." Really? These songs all seems too long, but they all hover between three and four minutes. The problem is that the structures are so maddeningly similar that at some point you just think you're hearing the same song over and over and over and over. Half these songs were recorded in one studio, the other half in another, and the band's lack of direction is shown up by the fact that they simply alternate tracks: the even numbers are from one session, the odds from the other. Three different drummers, none of whom seem to do much more than keep a beat, served in the making of this record. For all the things I dislike about this assault of the boring, if they'd had somebody sitting behind the kit who knew (and liked?) the music he was making, at least it wouldn't plod on quite so achingly dully. I don't know how many adverbs and adjectives I can pile on top of each other to explain the agony this album has put me through. It stinks, not because it's actually bad, but because it's so fucking average it makes me want to give up. "The 21 Gun Salute" is the one song that's almost listenable, and I could see it becoming some kind of moderate hit. The artwork in the booklet is nice (seriously—I like it a lot, actually). Time to listen to the Ramones.