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By RYAN MAVITY
I’m not sure what exactly I think of Summer Of Wolves, the new album by The Minor Times. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been out of the CD reviewing business for a while or not, but I’m not quite sure if this album is really good or just mediocre. There’s plenty of pummeling riffs, screaming and swirling atmospherics, but does it add up to anything?
The best way to think of The Minor Times is to take the abrasive vocal stylings of Meshuggah and mix it up with the trance-inducing musical style of the Deftones. The band pounds away, and they certainly are heavy, but the songs here are decidedly generic. Tracks like “Ladder Devils” and “Blackhole Living” sound like 50 other bands you might hear on Liquid Metal. On the other hand, the eight-minute “This Is the Blues” captures a certain transfixing, stoner-rock vibe. Mixing up acoustic guitars and electric piano with a pounding rhythm, the track moves from bludgeoning to mesmerizing at varying speeds. “Amazing Grace” is another solid track, with its off-kilter drumming to a candidate for best lyric of the year with the line “Young love is deader than ever.”
The only problem is there aren’t enough songs as good, inventive and experimental as “Blues.” While “Blues” shows a bold side, most of the time the band instead opts for straightforward, although somewhat clichéd, pummelings. If “Blues” wasn’t on the record, I would maybe give them a little more credit. But when you have one song that is better than everything else on the record, it leaves you wanting more where that came from.
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