Tuesday, 22 May 2007
Hard listening, not hard rock. After a four year lay off , Tomahawk - the alt.metal brainchild of Duane Denison and Mike Patton - return with a rather different sound. The trio (now lacking bassist Kevin Rutmanis) have evolved.. no longer sounding like the bastard lovechild of a perverse form of metal,
Being closer to Mike Patton's other band, the jazz-thrash-speedcore act Fantomas, "Anonymous" is a bizarre selection of material that actually has very little to do with previous Tomahawk releases : the album consists (mostly) of cover versions and reworkings of traditional Native Indian folk songs, and it sounds it.
Gone are anything as memorable as tunes, or lyrics, or melody, in favour of a serious of increasingly strange soundscapes of tribal chanting supported by a selection of bizarrely-tuned twangings and clattering drums. At times the music veers towards a country slant ("Long, Long Weary Day"), or unusually tuned, deep choruses of wordless vocals that sound nearer Satanic chants than actual 'songs'. The previously conventional-ish Tomahawk template is ditched in favour of short, almost clipped musical rhythms and atonal chanting.
Overall, for fans of Tomahawks previous work, be warned that "Anonymous" moves quite far from the original template and veers into the atonal, experimental field characterised by Patton's more specialist, and more challenging band Fantomas, and should approach with caution. Not easy listening - but hard listeningOnly registered users can write comments.
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