The Up Rising

Sometime in 2017, a gofundme video started floating around for Icicle, an insistent new single featuring the original lineup of Wisconsin cult band Last Crack who, apropos of nothing, had suddenly come out of retirement from the financial and commercial obscurity they had originally entered into it. Despite the promise shown for the new material, the pledge date came and went, the target was not met, and nothing more was heard. A chance meeting between longtime Madison, WI native Thom Hazaert, a member of Dave Ellefson’s US record label EMP, and guitarist Paul Schluter, led to the label picking up the spare change and putting the record out anyways. The end product being The Up Rising - a record way better than it had any right to be. Once again, the public barely shrugged and walked away. Who decided it wasn’t cool to listen to our Liquid Jesus and Janes Addiction records anymore anyways?

Here is a trip to a decidedly early-nineties sonic headspace, rendered professionally in a modern sheen by the band itself in guitarist Schluter’s home studio. The tribal toms, growling bass and wailing siren sample announce the appropriately-monikered Siren Song, defiantly returning the listener to that thin era of pop-metal deconstruction and a bunch of bands that couldn’t decide if they wanted to be on 120 Minutes or Headbanger’s Ball. As if to punctuate that sentiment, the band gets down with some of that old-timey rap-rock with, Golden Age. Alternating between a breakdown riff where lead singer Buddo quasi-raps through verses about praising Allah to the heights and letting the minarets sing, and a piledriving, stoner riff incantation “Try to go to Heaven/DIE DIE DIE.” Soaring high like an eagle in a Creed video, the anthemic Passenger proves while time may have altered Buddo’s hairline, it hasn’t taken much off his vocal power, nor has he lost any of his crazy charisma. Elsewhere, hypnotic, strummed open chording pairs with Buddo’s U2-like earnest lyrical sentiments for world peace on Blame. Compared to 1991's Dave Jerden produced Burning Time, things have been played relatively straight, until the oddball Greta Grinder begins with the insistent, ominous chant (I think) “You’re gonna get the belt/You’re gonna get the velveteen/You’re gonna get the belt/You’re gonna get the best of me.” Err…OK? Many shifting moods later in the bridge Buddo clarifies the situation with “Tension is high/And so am I” thus fulfilling the narrative. The album slows a bit from there, though more excellent nineties moves can yet be found on the yearning riffs of Three Ghosts and the rolling, psychedelic slide work by guitarists Schruter and Don Bakken on Discipline. That said, the enjoyment still seemed qualified until the gentle, insistent Bullet Train rolls in, a song which is - you guessed it - about riding a bullet train. “I like the train/Speed makes me happy” coos a childlike, hypnotized Buddo, floating serenely over the trancelike, hushed arrangement, and deep buddhist-like vocal chants. Working like a throw rug that just brings the room together, this wonderful song ends this album as mysteriously as it begins.

In a year where Rage Against The Machine will be dusting off their choicest anti-authority anthems to shake down tens of thousands of rich millennials at Coachella, one might be forgiven for thinking the environment was okay for a little light might be shone upon lesser bands like Last Crack proving themselves on solid comeback efforts like this one, even if many of these songs likely originated much closer to the band’s original heyday. The public indifference and lack of media coverage outside of the cheese state proves otherwise. Maybe hope for an alt metal revival is a bit much, and hell, even considering the entry requirements of that thoroughly segmented mini-universe, these guys are eccentric. Still, it wouldn’t be the first time Last Crack were just ever so slightly ahead of their moment.