The Art of Rebellion

The fond memories of Suicidal Tendencies’ thrash era seemed to have ended at the release of this album, or at least that was what many of their core fans came to believe when they heard the introduction of a host of non-Metal influences to the band’s sound. Essentially one has to decide whether to judge this based on the context of the time it came out in, or in a general sense based on the band’s past and that of the style they belong to. When you apply the former standard, this towers above about 95% of the various grunge and groove metal releases that came forth in 1992 and 1993. But the latter standard, which is what I always go by when all is said and done, doesn’t really tell that much of a different story.

“Art Of Rebellion” is somewhat of an ironic album in that despite the spectacle of a badass security guard standing guard while the Mona Lisa burns like a miniature forest fire, the album presents a highly progressive outlook, almost to the point of being Avant-garde. There’s a fairly large collection of acoustic Rock and mellow parts all around, all but predicting parts of Megadeth’s “Cryptic Writings” about 5 years before it came out. If you doubt this, listen to the really ballsy mid-tempo ballad/Thrasher “Monopoly Of Sorrow”, which is all but a more intricate ancestor of “Use The Man”. There’s also the prominent use of straight clean vocals by Mike Muir, who almost sounds like a punk rock answer to the Paul McCartney question. There is of course the occasional Primus moment from time to time courtesy of bassist Primadonna Rob Trujillo and some groovy drumming here and there.

Naturally some might be thrown off by this notion of avant-garde music, so I’ll simply put it in context by stating that this is such only in that it seems to bounce between styles in a fairly spontaneous fashion. There’s nothing quirky about what is on here, as it basically listens like a really good version of the slowed down thrash/groove style that was really popular at times. Songs like “I’ll Hate You Better” listen somewhat similar to rock bands of the time like Candlebox and Ugly Kid Joe, but without the over-indulgent bluesy nature of the former or the comical lyrics and vocals of the latter. The same story basically applies to “Where’s The Truth” and “Which Way To Free”, which have some pretty impressive lead guitar slots, but otherwise listen like a crisper and better version of Anthrax‘s “Sound Of White Noise”. Mike Muir is primarily the element that succeeds here where John Bush fails on said 1993 album, as what is heard here is a versatile mixture of vocal styles, rather than a straight up cloning of Layne Staley.

The places where this album suffers a bit is when the band tries to get too advantageous and looses itself in a sea of differing ideas. An excellent example of this is “I Wasn’t Meant To Feel This/Asleep At The Wheel”, which essentially spends 2 minutes stuck in some really obscure sounding jazzy bass grooves while the vocals just rants on about things just not seeming right, before going off into an odd mixture of hard rock and folk music. Muir and Dave Mustaine have had this sort of unofficial contest going on between the two of them to see who can come up with the most ramble-drenched speeches every put to Metal music, and right now things are looking pretty good for Muir. The bass gets a lot of activity on here, almost putting a bit of a Flea flavoring into what sounds like a Jane’s Addiction song. “Can’t Stop” has a similar narrated rant in the first half of the song, but thankfully throws some solid riffs at the listener to give the song a sense of familiarity.

Fortunately the weirdness that occupies a fair share of this album is all but completely canceled out by a few really solid pieces of Thrashing goodness. “It’s Going Down” takes a pretty straight up approach, but is loaded with some really solid lead guitar work and Muir’s vocals have a solid punch to them. “We Call This Mutha Revenge” is a little more multifaceted and has a slow intro with some more quality soloing before bursting into a solid piece of riff happy goodness. That principle riff just screams Bay Area goodness like crazy, mixed with a little bit of tasteful bass shredding here and there. My personal favorite of this bunch is the catchy as hell anthem of social consciousness known as “Gotta Kill Captain Stupid”. This is essential thrash metal that essentially merges that rapidly changing riff style done so well by Vio-Lence with a straight up speed metal beat employed often on early 90s Annihilator. Forget about Captain Howdy scaring the hell out of you, and don’t even bother with how many people Captain Trips ended up killing, this captain just pummels with every crushing blow. Muir’s vocals get a little bit homeboy-like at times and the lyrics are a little bit preachy, but this is metallic gold if I’ve ever heard it.

Ultimately this entire album comes off as a mixed bag, but a mostly solid and enjoyable mixture regardless. Eclectic fans who can tolerate a little funk with their metal and a lot of other stuff mixed in will definitely enjoy this. It’s far better musically than “Frolic In The Park” or a whole lot of other groove oriented albums, but it’s definitely a little bit down the ladder from what this band has offered up on previous studio works. It’s a little bit sad that the 90s were allowed to change a lot of great 80s bands the way it did, but Suicidal Tendencies were among the few who were still heavily influential at this point and didn’t themselves completely suck. Granted, the distance with which some apples fell from this tree became so wide for some bands that you wonder if its branches were stretched out past the ledges of some steep cliffs on all sides.

Originally submitted to (www.metal-obserer.com) on April 8, 2009.