Band: Where The Skeletons Play
Release: Generation Wars (EP)
Release Date: Out Now
‘Generation Wars’ begins with ‘The Ghosts On The Frontline’ which quite frankly wouldn’t sound out of place in a John Carpenter horror movie: it’s atmospheric and fairly unsettling. This isn’t completely unexpected from a duo called Stitch and Bones who have an interesting set of influences, from Nine Inch Nails to Deftones to Placebo, all three known for not holding back when it comes to the weird.
From second track ‘Never Born A Criminal’ we can definitely hear a Brian Molko-influenced vocal and it works pretty well: the track gets across a seemingly pure frustration with the world and the instrumentation of distorted guitars and ear-smashing drums accentuates this feeling. The vocals climax in a psychotic screaming which echoes into the distance and we then hear the police chatter which is put to good use and hints towards rage at the justice system which is pretty obvious anyway from the title.
Apparently the gear used on the EP is all classic, so there’s a Marshall amp once used by Motorhead, drum mics used by The Beatles, and other quirky items. Whether or not this means a great deal is hard to tell: the sound quality is great and you can hear every squeak, every chirp and every whine on the songs. ‘At Your Epicenter’ is a disappointing track as it builds up for so long. The duo get your hopes up to thinking there’s going to be a big payoff and you’re left with a solid guitar riff but not much else in the form of excitement.
‘When The World Was In Black And White’ is a song that starts out like a Deftones track (for 15 seconds at least) and then quickly descends into a slightly awkward and muddled dual guitar riff, and the song overall is quite mundane and lacks any obvious cohesion from the duo. The final track sadly offers up more dilemmas as we get a bit of slow guitar, a bit of ambience and some real tranquillity, but all this is quickly squashed by some irreverent muffled dialogue, which seems to have come out of a party political broadcast.
The problem with ‘Generation Wars’ is the fact that there’s a lot of ‘stuff’ to get out of the way before you actually find any meat and potatoes: it feels like so much effort has gone into creating ambience and an obscure sound (which isn’t that original anyway) that the substance gets lost along the way. It is a real shame though, because Where The Skeletons Play are obviously trying to do something original and worthy of praise, but maybe more time needs to be spent on finely tuning their ideas and where they want to go.
Overall, the EP is flawed and it’s frustrating because you just want to get into it, but the record is so alienating at times that it’s a desperately hard task.
4/10
Reviewer: Greg Spencer
