Haven't heard the new one but caught them live a few weeks ago. Best I've seen them since the early days. Agata was stretching out more than usual; extended psyche guitar lines that would then be quickly pulverize by Rika and Dave Witte. Rika's basslines sounded almost dublike at times. Witte's drumming is huge and now completely part of the band's sound. Overall felt more dynamic and more often jumping away from the already well proven formula. Last couple times I saw them it seem like a repeat, if great, ot the time before. This time, they blew me away. Taylor McLaren <morakanabad@yahoo.ca> wrote:So I picked up a copy of the new Melt-Banana album yesterday, and the first thing that came to mind was that the cover art looked like something I would have expected to see on a Frontline Assembly album in the '90s. For the duration of the first track, "Cell-Scape" sounds a lot like the over-long intros to FLA songs, too. Thankfully, the whooshing and panning silliness dies down pretty quickly, and a whole bunch of fast, earnest RAWK ensues. The bass and guitar work would fit in pretty well with Alec Empire's more recent hard stuff, and I'm even reminded of the incredible drive behind the track that Tom Morello did with the Prodigy... these really aren't cool musical roots to be displaying, are they? Semi-unfortunately, the vocals don't always fit too comfortably on top of the music... where it's thick and heavy, they're sometimes thin and shrill, but any discomfort this causes usually goes away when another layer of guitar gets dropped into the mix and serious head-nodding resumes. Better yet, when the Rawk knob is turned down a notch or three so that the vocals can take over for a bit near the end, Yasuko starts channeling Alex Welz from Lick, and the result is... fun. It's sort of like "Teeny Shiny", minus the filler... aside from the intro, there's nothing on this disc that I dislike. Whoo-ha! -me _______________________________________________ zorn-list mailing list zorn-list@mailman.xmission.com To UNSUBSCRIBE or Change Your Subscription Options, go to the webpage below http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/zorn-list --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!