Envy - Abyssal EP (Rock Action)
2/5
By: Charlie Potter
Don't anyone take this too badly. All I mean is that there is little even remotely empowering or serious about Abyssal. It's difficult, because I certainly wouldn't want to erase the idea of the tortured soul bent over double pouring everything into his music from all existence, but if you go to a fair amount of experimental music shows then you will undoubtedly realise that the market is horrendously saturated with this kind of thing. You just want these folk to lighten up a bit, realise that just because something's fun it doesn't mean that it can't be from the heart.
The first few times I heard this EP, I honestly thought it might as well have been a demo. It wasn't until I discovered that this is one of the bigger rock groups of Japan and this is their ninth record in 9 years that I actually stopped entertaining that hypothesis. I'm guessing that this would make them pioneers, but at the end of the day there are loads of bands that do this stuff at least as well as this band, and they're from Exeter, the closest culture spot to where I used to live. And I bet those Exeter bands are really big fans of this band.
Yet the fact remains that I don't seem to be that bothered about listening to either. What's the point? It's so obvious that between Mogwai and Godspeed they have got everything that these bands could hope to do sewn up, sorted, done and dusted. I know there are a lot of people out there that would disagree with me, I'm just saying that really I would get all the Mogwai and Godspeed albums before I embarked on this.
Ah... it's just totally beyond me why the recording is so shaky. Couldn't they just have gone and recorded in Mogwai's castle, given that Rock Action (Mogwai's label) are putting out the EP in this country? But all that being said, Abyssal is at least relatively diverse, with some nice appropriately sparkly and gently played guitar parts. There's a loud slow one, a loud fast one... oh, and a couple of quiet slow ones.
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