There Is Something Wrong

Trying to review this thing while listening to it is impossible. Normally when I say that I mean it as a compliment- some very atmospheric doom or black album sucking you in, kinda thing- here it's like that saying about an idiot dragging you down to their level and then beating you with experience. It's like trying to debate quantum physics or some shit at a party when you're the only sober one. I'm no mountaineer, but the way your brain cells get wasted here must be pretty analogous to spending a week up in the death zone.

Still, to quote a reviewer on another album, what There is Something Wrong does in badness, it more than makes up for in sheer awfulness. I'm vaguely reminded of Damien Storm in that this is presumably not a joke, not satire- a weird collection of tunes that don't really parody anything too obvious, doesn't sound like satire, after all. Some thoroughly weird outsider art/joke/bad music hybrid that is a wellspring of injokes and mirth to the people who know about it, but met by confusion and revulsion from those who aren't in on it. If you're going to give this album a crack, I hope you have friends with a quirky taste of humour.

If I had to attempt to describe the music it would be something like, get a 14 year old who froths on Pantera (nothing wrong with that), owns a very very cheap dimebag knock off guitar, and has been playing guitar for maybe three weeks. Get the least coherent Alex Jones fan in the world. Lock them in a room for a few weeks. Release what they came up with absolutely no editing, that's a very important part. It probably still doesn't really describe the "insane ranting over absolutely terrible riffs" thing that is the entire album, but it's the closest you're easily gonna get. Pseudocide and False Flags Flying probably do the best job of summing up the rambling songwriting, the croaked "dude trying to talk as low as possible" vocals and how said vocals dominate- because the message is important!!!!!- but really any of the tunes are as bad as the others.

One little extra depth sorta-thing I enjoy about this album is that the conspiracy theories that underlie this album are completely incoherent. These fellas (lazily) quote Marx, will happily talk about perfectly legitimate stuff like Cointelpro and Paperclip and Nariyah's Testimony (which I'd never heard of and was an eye opening wiki read) but then drop it in with much loopier shit like vaccines and fluoride, quote an X-files excerpt like it's a genuinely profound one, so on and so forth. I keep on getting back to the words rambling and incoherent, and that's because it's the best descriptor of this album.

From a purely musical approach, this album gets a hard 0. From a "good laugh with the boys", it gets a much higher rating. I'll go with the more objective, and much lower, rating this time round. Suffice to say though that this is my favourite 0%er.

Ohhh boy, this is a weird one. I always favour thrash acts over other styles when I flick through promos to review, simply because it's my favourite sub-genre and I find there's far more variety out there than naysayers would have you believe. However, occasionally I come across something that makes me yearn for less variety because they've taken experimentation the wrong way.

Chicago's Aftermath are a peculiar anomaly in that they formed way back in 1985 and produced a shit ton of EPs, demos and splits. They didn't get round to releasing a full-length, Eyes Of Tomorrow, until 1994 Even in thrash's waning years, this proved to be a sorely overlooked album which pushed the boundaries of the sub-genre and could have pioneered a new progressive, experimental direction for the style. Unfortunately, the '90s happened. We wouldn't see Aftermath release another LP until February 2019. There Is Something Wrong is the quintet's sophomore effort and their first in 25 years. Fellow thrashers Sacred Reich pulled a similar return to the fold this year with Awakening< , but that turned out to be a massive disappointment. This album also disappoints, but in a totally off-the-wall way.

I found myself scratching my head for the majority of this release, wondering why the hell they had made such odd decisions. After the short intro "Can You Feel It?", I felt the use of media cuttings, press samples and sound effects was a little intrusive, but they were used as transitions between the songs on the first half of the album, so I accepted them as a linking theme. However, the latter half lets this trait get totally out of control, to the point where tracks like "A Handful Of Dynamite" can barely be called 'songs' and would be more suited as obscure B-sides on a noise album. Being labelled as 'technical progressive thrash metal' on Metal Archives was one thing, but literally filling 4-7 minute tracks with nothing but samples from documentaries and news reports is just taking the piss. The worst offenders here are "Expulsion" and "Pseudocide" which meander along totally aimlessly, and I literally never want to hear ever again.

The frustrating thing is that when they do finally get around to thrashing like a real band, they can thrash pretty fuckin' hard and sweet. There's not much here, so make the most of tracks like "Temptation Overthrown" which is a solid tech/speed metal track, and the more rounded "Scientists & Priest" (probably the closest to a fully-fledged song on here). The production quality is solid, with the guitar/bass/drums combo making for a satisfyingly crunchy sound. Even the batshit burst of "Diethanasia" is not without its merits. Sure, it straddles the fence between cleverly playing around with time signatures and just...being wrong... But at least it's not devoid of energy and momentum. The title-track almost comes close to being a progressively tinged thrasher but, again, it's like the songwriter is spinning a freakin' wheel to decide what the next section will sound like. Despite the obvious flaws in the songwriting and flow, there is one aspect of this record which is unforgivable...

There Is Something Wrong? Yeah, you bet there is. The fucking vocals and lyrics. If you remember Colorado metallers Havok and their 2017 album Conformicide, you'll doubtlessly remember the backlash over the ridiculous alt-right, conspiracy theorist, faux-rebellious lyrics which were so bad they flat-out ruined the experience for some listeners. Well, bold statement incoming: There Is Something Wrong  makes Conformicide sound like Death's Symbolic. At least Havok had a semblance of cohesive thought to their ramblings. Aftermath opt for total incoherence in their garbled excuse for a message. It's all predictable tin-foil hat bullshit about how governments are liars, pharmacies rule the world, JFK shot Abraham Lincoln on 9/11, blah-blah who actually fucking cares? The following is a genuine lyric from this 2019 'technical progressive thrash metal' album:

'Hollywood, Vatican, FBI, CIA!
Hollywood, Vatican, FBI, CIA!
They lie by deceiving mankind!
Liars, liars, evil empires!
They lie!
Pure evil!
By deceiving!
These people!
Mankind!
Watch out!'

And who could forget this poetic gem?

'Decorating words, population stabilization.
Unsustainable sustainable international development.
Nuclear chemical biological warfare'.

Sheer artistry. Now imagine this bewildering stupidity being firebombed at your ears via an unintelligible bark which makes no effort to fit vocal patters with the music. You can't even blame language barriers, these guys are from Illinois for Christ sake! Their jumbled ramblings on Infowars wouldn't matter so much if there was plenty of riff-centric thrash metal to headbang along with. Unfortunately, the samples and ambience completely outshine the actual music. As it stands, I can barely remember a single riff from this mess, and I've heard it four times through. I deserve a fucking medal. Approaching this album as a politically-charged tech/thrash masterpiece along the lines of Xentrix or Toxik was the fault of my own dumb optimism. I've learned my lesson.

I checked the band page here shortly before Christmas, but there was nothing new posted… apparently the guys were content enough with roaming the world for the odd live stint after the reformation in 2014, in a way similar to their colleagues from Coroner, with no intentions of producing anything new…

but there’s always an aftermath to the aftermath, like my very wise grandmother used to say; in other words, lose no hope folks, and here I am, on a cold February afternoon, shortly after St. Valentine’s Day, staring at this utterly unexpected, belated present given to me by this gorgeous female deity (name unspecified) that I have inexplicably forgotten about. Still, they love you selflessly and perennially, these female deities, regardless of whether you still… worship them or not, and gifts from them keep coming in one form or another.

This particular form, though, may surprise the band fans, especially those who were expecting a faithful follow-up to the grandiose “Eyes of Tomorrow”; cause this isn’t. However, it’s a fairly interesting cross over the band’s entire discography, not forgetting about the musicians’ spell from the late-90’s under the Mother God Moviestar moniker either, which may sound like a curious mish-mash on first, even second listen, but those who have been following the guys’ career from the very beginning all the way to the present day will be hardly left disappointed.

So be prepared for a quirky progressive metal amalgam with thrash still leading the show but provided in a less serious, goofier shape. The various, plain disparate as well at times, nuances are scattered all over the band creating the illusion that this may as well be a logical sequel to “Eyes of Tomorrow” initially with the jumpy neurotic progressiver "False Flag Flying", a really nice restless inauguration which unerringly serves the unique old/new school juxtaposition from said album. But then the short bursting thrashcore cuts (“Diethanasia”, “Smash Reset Control”) recalling the band’s early demos come flying and the situation becomes fairly unpredictable, the listener further stunned by the unperturbed balladic ambience of "Pseudocide", a nod to the alternative/industrial rockabilias from Mother God Moviestar’s only album; the abrasive music-less distraction "A Handful of Dynamite", and the noisy industrial parade "Expulsion".

The stylish progressive thrashisms don’t jump out the window, mind you; they stay around being regularly provided either as outtakes from the more recent Voivod output (the vivid dystopian nightmare "Scientists and Priest") or as labyrinthine psychedelic journeys like the title-track where surprises lie in wait at every corner, with twists and turns following in dizzying succession recalling the works of other visionaries like Calhoun Conquer, Wartech, and Transilience. The ride never becomes too abstract on these more contrived numbers with "Gaslight" nicely blending intricate psychotic thrashing with sudden speedier escapades, and "Temptation Overthrown" shooting a delightful portion of fast-paced dissonant riffs, serving the template for the potential hyper-active remake of “Dimension Hatross” either by Voivod themselves or by any other team of intrepid musicians.

There’s a bit for everyone here, and although there will be some who will frown at the larger-than-life conglomerate cooked, the lack of perfect homogeneity works to the band’s advantage… this time. Being missing from the scene for such a huge period, a veteran can surely choose to cover a wider area from their repertoire, not only to make their old fanbase feel nostalgic, but also to present the younger generation with an adequate picture of what was going on in the band camp before some of those folks were even born. I personally had no expectations whatsoever regarding this opus, again its emergence caught me absolutely unprepared, and although I immediately started praying for a faithful continuation to the “Eyes…”, I was by no means pulled back by these multifarious soundscapes. Provided that the Mother God Moviestar stint also worked for me to an extent, especially those tracks recorded earlier as the 1996 demo, I saw no major reasons to complain; it’s the aftermath to the aftermath, after all, can we really expect strict order and robotic discipline from such unheralded occurrences…

no we can’t, and these veterans from old Chicago town are back to show us that. There’s nothing wrong with this new creation of theirs; on the contrary, there’s always something right with anything/anyone that doesn’t give up but keeps providing an aftermath to the aftermath to the aftermath to the aftermath…

to the aftermath.