FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
SHALLOW, NORTH DAKOTA
This Apparatus Must Be Earthed
Sonic UnyonKITTENS
in Bazooka and the Hustler
Sonic Unyon· Second full-length recording for Hamilton's Shallow, ND and the third for Winnipeg's Kittens.
· Both bands are Melvins-heavy, but with more velocity.
Amphetamine Reptile Records in Minneapolis had a monopoly on the pseudo-metal sound in the late '80s and early '90s, and now Hamilton's Sonic Unyon label is taking a stab at the market. Both Shallow, North Dakota and the Kittens are cut from the same bottom-heavy cloth, but they've tailored their styles in very different manners.
In simple terms, This Apparatus Must Be Earthed is a mesmerizing, bruising affair. No slow, lurching riffery. No finesse to speak of. Just romper-stomper rhythms and a literal pounding their point home with repetitive, circular song structures.
To their credit, when Shallow, ND decide to slow down, they deconstruct their sound to audacious extremes: the title track is five-plus minutes of intermittent drones and nothing else. They forego silly, out-of-place power ballads for these spacey-yet-heavy moments, which is clearly the right thing to do. When you live at the very bottom end of the tonal spectrum, your success is measured less by pop music standards and more by pure sonic experience / mayhem. And this, Shallow, ND delivers in spades.
Of course, applying the same thinking to the Kittens' latest CD yields the opposite result. Call it metal-twang. Call it cowbilly-core. Call it Hank Williams meets Hank Rollins. Just don't call it a worthwhile excursion into genre mixing. The mayhem contained on Bazooka and the Hustler is not sonic, but rather stylistic. The underlying philosophy seems to be, "Yeah, it's hardcore, but it's kind of twangy, so it's wild and different. Which is cool." Well, no, it isn't.
The chemistry works better than, say, mixing country and western with techno (yes, it has been done and guess how that experiment turned out), but that isn't saying much. The hybridization they've achieved annoys more than it entertains. Depending on where your preferences lie, Kittens in Bazooka and the Hustler is either bad hardcore or really bad country, and proves that meeting in the middle is largely unworkable.
Shallow, ND 4 out of 5
Kittens 2 out of 5
Hector Litorco
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