V
2001
Radioactive Records
Live is a band I've always found to be extremely unique for the hard rock genre, much in part due to their constant blending of Eastern and other influences and intriguing experimentation. This enjoyable era of the band lasted for a very long time, but seemed to very quickly and instantaneously dissipate as soon as they broke through to the 2000's. There was a shaky period for Live in the early 00's where they tried to juggle commercial rock, ballads, cultural styles, and grunge-y hard rock. Unfortunately the turnout was rather heavy handed and fell rather flat. Lyrically, the album is weaker compared to The Distance to Here (only two years earlier) and Throwing Copper. Whilst the latter had poetic, progressive-like lyrics they have now been stripped down to awful, shameless innuendo (Does he run you deep enough / to take you there (Baby) ~ Deep Enough) The music is uneven throughout, with clumsily placed and performed ballads at random periods (these ballads are some of the WORST I have ever heard- quite a feat). The sheer uncaring of these ballads I think is mainly because of how unfitting Kowalczyk's vocal style is to soft, Chicago-style waltzes.
Let's try and gravitate to something more in their line of work; the hard rock they present is actually very enjoyable when they actually show it off. 'Simple Creed' start with some power notes but it quickly has to tone down in order for the terrible lyrics to ensue. When the vocals and the band are able to work together there is ,such more of old Live to be heard. My favorite example is with 'Flow', where a driving riff leads both sections very well. But there still is the fact that the interesting composition-work is very much lost on V. Although aspirations are still there, both musicianship and music writing for this album don't allow it to come in full splendor like on their earlier material.
While the rather avant-garde intro to the album makes misleading promises of complexity, V is ultimately a boring experience that is superficial in many needed areas. Perhaps later releases will yield different results.
© 2015 - The Frying Pan & Thatcher
Originally written for Metal Music Archives on 12/26/2015.
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