33 rebellions per minute
1998
Bliss, CHASING THE MAD RABBIT
The only reason I've heard of MAD RABBIT is that I received it as a free promo, so I'm frankly surprised that it's excellent. Or perhaps not; my acquisition of an honest-to-goodness audience this year has inspired several such promo offers, and the reason I accepted this one, ignoring the rest, was that Bliss-- Berklee College Of Music grad Michael Trapp, who performs "all instruments", and Matt Wells on "all vocals"-- uniquely bothered to scan down my page and find out what I listen to before contacting me. I'm going to guess it was my best-of-year awards to Black Sabbath, Yes, Blue Oyster Cult, and Nine Inch Nails that endeared me to them.
Not to say any album has to make sense, but the closest to good sense I can get from CHASING would be by programming out tracks 3, 4, 7, and 14, leaving a varied but coherent twelve-song heavy metal album. "Karmic Wheel", "Too Shy", "Little Bitches" (the title a deliberatly offensive reference to Tipper Gore and her Parents' Music Resource Center allies, for what that's worth), and "Silent Scream" are charging techno-metal, like Black Sabbath's DEHUMANIZER bolstered by drum programming reminiscent of machine-guns with silencers: Drum As Weapon is a recurring Trapp tendency. Black Sabbath resemblances are appropriate, since Wells sounds exactly like an Ozzy Osborne with, for emergencies, technical training as a singer. "Wrecked" sounds like early, slow, menacing Black Sabbath with bass suggestive of the queasy stomach rumblings of a suspension bridge; but then it breaks into flitting victory synth, which is crowded out by sludgy monotone bass riffs. "Nevermind" sounds, except the Ozzy vocals and Trapp's typical insistence on flashy Yngwie Malmstein classical-metal soloing, like a NEVERMIND leftover. "Colorblind", highly melodic, melds the semi-acoustic agility of Rush's HEMISPHERES with a polished chorus more like Rush's commercial breakthrough MOVING PICTURES. "Darkest Hour"'s bass ostinato is reminiscent of NIN's "Sanctified", but it's a metal song with swirling psychedelicized church organ and piano, and the guitar soloing is furiously direct. "Something Broken", which starts with aggressive yet tinkly autoharp runs, is a "Nothing Else Matters" sort of power-ballad, but more staccato and with march-tempo piano accompanying the rock crunch. "Rusted" is a crisp 3-chord merging of Twisted Sister goof anthem, Judas Priest twin guitar attack, and late Suicidal Tendencies funk inflection. "Rejoice", with cascading, echoey drum counterpoints and distorted bass and vocals, is the evil fraternal twin to Yes's "Rejoice", which opened their synth-rock career on TORMATO.
As for the tracks I hypothetically deleted? "Sick" I delete in reality, a flawless imitation of Gravity Kills, who condensed the cheap and annoying elements of Trent Reznor's often-brilliant work and turned it to platinum (poetic chorus lyric: "I'm so sick of (I'm so sick of)/ I'm so sick of (I'm so sick of)/ you!"). The others? They are, quite simply, highly agreeable sap. "Once Upon A Time", though building up to loud rock instrumentation, is fundamentally a Black Sabbath impression of Cat Stevens. "Hope" is luxurious harmony-pop, reminiscent of Europe's worthy 1989 cheese-metal hit "Superstitious" but without even the pretense of heaviness, employing shimmery treble synthesizer, shaker and sleigh bell trading off half-notes as percussion, and a hint of programmed choral backdrop. "Insides Out"'s angelic rippling hook would've thrilled Magnetic Fields's Stephen Merritt if he'd written it first; the vocal harmonies are phased, ABBEY ROAD-like, and the bass is warm and enveloping. What makes these songs odd is that Black Sabbath and other reference points here (Fates Warning, even Prong at the harsh end of "...Bitches") are _not_ the kinds of metal bands that do ballads. But I suppose they could.
One objection to this album: all I really ask of lyrics is that I not be embarrassed to sing them, and Bliss choose the worst moments to fail. Most of it's okay, occasionally even kind of cool: "I nearly died, between the cradle and the funeral pyre" gets an impressive lot of metaphysical mileage for one measly "nearly", and the Ted Turner-endorsed image "you colorized my world", though painfully sincere here, should definitely be employed for some more sardonic use; perhaps as a grateful song to a first lover in which both his importance, and the reasons for his eventually being dumped after he'd served his uses, are made clear. But "Oooh, loving you on the outside, loving you on the inside [4x]"??? Or the irritating redundancy of "I was hoping someday we'd be lovers/ I was hoping someday we'd be more than just good friends/ I was hoping some day we'd be partners, you and me/ I was hoping someday you'd be my lady". Those, both from the ballads, are songs that otherwise I'd have no hesitation putting on a Best-of-1998 mix, and the lyrics to the excellent "Nevermind", though fine in their own right, are direct and sincere in their tribute to Kurt Cobain, which I'm afraid would offend _him_. Maybe I'm too easily embarrassed, and should tape these songs anyway. Maybe any band producing 14 strong songs in 16 tracks (there's a negligible instrumental in there) should be forgiven such lapses. In fact, I hope so. In retrospect, Bliss's album would've been worth my money, so it'd be nice if I helped spend someone else's for them.
P.S. For future releases, Bliss will be known as Bliss (This). Cute. They can be reached if necessary at blissthis@aol.com
P.M.S. Note to J-Bird Records, Bliss's label: it is bad sport to print your label's name on the spine in easy-to-read lettering, and your act's name in tiny, squintworthy type. It is also annoying to make the spines of all your releases look identical, except for that squinted-at band name. I doubt it helps sales, either.
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