Too Cool to Pray

“…when stumble on memories not liked, I stumble on memories not liked…”

The two years since ‘86’s Party With God shows quite a bit of maturation in songwriting by this CA five-piece, for what’s found in these twelve new tracks is exactly what many felt had been missing ten-fold from the debut. That’s a pretty good chunk of time, two years, and in that span the line-up held pretty fast except for bassist Sean Smithson, replaced by (just) Todd, but this still gives ya sort of an idea how well these guys gel on a personal and professional level. Further testament to their personal cohesiveness can be heard in musical changes of such scale that the band could be mistaken for an altogether different one, and is the kind of membership-wide metamorphosis which almost always comes with a half-the-band change-out.

The differences between PWG and Too Cool to Pray (another playful title belying their actual seriousness) hover somewhere between surprising and astounding, depending on yer personal level of tolerance for the four-on-the-floor, single gear drivetrain they’d previously flown around town in up ‘til now. Racing nowhere near the volatile average speed they once held dear, just about every track here proves that somewhere along the way Sacrilege B.C. discovered tempo awareness, structural dependency, rhythmic flesh-outs, and the importance of distinguishable choruses. I mean, if right off the bat the disparity in kick-off track “Cold” fails to hit like a flash flood, then I guess someone wasn’t paying much attention to either album in the first place.

To compliment this newly-inaugurated thinking man’s thrash style, Strephon Taylor’s vocals gnaw way less on the music’s bone and more on its actual meat, and instead of a John McCarthy/Post Mortem-meets-(early) John Connelly/Nuclear Assault throatsear, they offer a spotlight on something more innate, almost that of a natural singer’s voice, while remaining somewhat harsh for the album’s entirety.

While Sacrilege B.C.’s sense of ease has been limited to album titles, pushing side two beyond this boundary is a, I dunno, bass-driven (showing off their new Todd), off-lounge, quasi-blues (admittedly still not a very good description) intro, gifting “Ripping Apart” with one-time, genuine lightheartedness. Late for the party is “Party With God”, which strangely missed the boat for its own lp and swims up to the shore here. The thing is, since it embraces TCTP’s new formula, it coulda either drowned there like a total fish outta water or rose to multi-faceted aquatic champion, but we'll never know.

Now it’s time to face the debut’s stalwart fans, ‘cos you know they’re not quite as dazzled with their new purchase. They’re out there (hell, I’m roundabout one of ‘em), the Party With God idolizers, the takers of thrash’s supra-abrasive, unflinching buzzsaw and tear-it-out-by-the-root barbarism and leavers of the same style’s moody nuances, soft-eruption grandeur, and interludes/bridges/breakdowns described at the very least as ‘interesting’. Possibly they'll find TCTP dilly-dallies with an overabundance of seemingly nowhere-going rhythmic journeys for their liking and, intensity-wise, doesn’t leave a lot to sink their teeth into. Not much of a surprise either is an impressive percentage of PWG’s aggression abandoning the building to present this better-rounded offering, meanwhile notably filed down are the vocal’s incisors - such modifications are gonna be a problem and will border on make-or-break for some people, and honestly I can’t blame ‘em much.

With their sophomore slab, it appears Sacrilege B.C. saddled itself with the goal of righting the wrongs of the debut, which as far as that microcosm of their style goes was successful and shouldn’t be disputed if you’ve heard any part of “Mistake”, “Where Are We Going”, “Front Seat Funky” or the title track. However, in their effort to accomplish this goal they completely dismissed everything cool about their first born, and it seems hard to swallow that it didn't occur to them to combine the two for just as much or more of a doozy follow-up, or at least one where the possibility for early fan disappointment would be less likely. In this light, Too Cool to Pray may have been in the same star system as DBC’s cool-ass Universe.

The lyrics of either album have a bit (well, a lot) to be desired, and while those of the debut are much more scathing and treacherous, these are lower-keyed and more attached to Earth.

Okay, consecutive ultra-dissimilar albums by the same band only come along every so often – Sanctuary’s Refuge Denied/Into the Mirror Black, Sabbat’s Dreamweaver/Mourning has Broken, Darkthrone’s Soulside Journey/A Blaze in the Northern Sky, the Celtic Frost trifecta To Mega Therion/Into the Pandemonium/Cold Lake (always an act to one-up the rest) – but when they do its almost impossible for even the fleeting fan not to notice and almost always creates combative commotion amongst fans. This is no exception.

Too bad Too Cool to Pray hadn’t met Party With God halfway between the altar and the kegger.