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deep strangeness - 79%
It's an interesting album, this one, is it a good one, is it a great one? Curses Impasse is a hard album to think about.
It's a fun album to listen to, but as I alluded to I'm still not sure what the point of it is. These guys have a lot of unusual things about them- the very clean guitar tones, the tendency to go almost a bit Bungle-ish in weird dissonant chords that dangle and jangle around awkwardly, like a dude with an extra testicle. There's the occasional bit that sounds almost Sonic Youth-y, the main riff in Subliminal Lock sounds exactly like a frog, there's a few very good, relatively traditional riffs here and there- the lead work is endearingly old school and the galloping riffs in the opener in are great. It's a hard album just to simply describe, let alone think about!
There's an appealing element of sardonic humour buried somewhere between the enigmatic vocals and dissonant, jangling guitars. Howls of Ebb are laughing, but at you, not with you. I'd almost be tempted to describe this as the general mood of the album- there are some intense bits, but for the most parts it's happy to mock, happy to wallow around all awkward like; an amphibian with one extra (or one less, I guess) leg.
And that's kinda what happens, for the whole album. It remains strange and opaque and fairly interesting throughout, never really giving anything away, but there's only so long you can stare at enochian scribblings before your attention span gives way. Certainly in that sense there's an undeniable occult aspect to the album in that it's happy working through it's mystery and if you're on the outside, sorry, you aren't getting it. The guitar and drums are tight as hell, the whole thing very deliberately arranged, it's not inaccessibly heavy or anything. I feel like even throughout many of the more rocking out parts- there's plenty of movements driven by a fairly upbeat, punkish drumbeat- it maintains a high level of weirdness.
Recently, with a few friends, I tried what was at one point the world's strongest beer, a 41% ABV indian pale ale. One of my friends summed the experience up nicely; "I didn't really enjoy it but everything else about it was great", and that's vaguely analogous to my Howls of Ebb listening time. "I don't really understand it but everything else about it is great". I'm giving it a fairly high mark; I don't pretend to love every moment but it's a really interesting listen and I'd definitely recommend it to other people who are on the look out for some genuinely out there music.
