5つ星のうち5.0If I could take only one CD with me in my exile to a desert island, it would be this one
2017年8月3日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済み
Amazonで購入
The opener to Yank Crime, Here Come The Rome Plows, is quite possibly one of the finest pieces of music ever written. It opens in the key of B and 5/4 time, with a manic bassline and brimming feedback that warns of the chaos to follow, before you're suddenly beaten over the head with a pipe wrench made of downstrokes. The lyrics paint an apocalyptic picture of an unstoppable army steamrolling all in their path while barbaric and almost oriental riffs tear across the tapestry of the piece like a Mongol Horde's stampeding cavalry.
ROME PLOWS. ROME PLOWS. ROME PLOWS.
All the violence and senseless bloodshed of every armed conflict from pre-history until now is condensed into a lyrical assault like a dull stone knife to the heart, over and over again. You feel a warrior's blood pulsing through your veins. You're at Agincourt, and you just took an arrow to the neck. You're in 'Nam, and the napalm is cooking you to a crisp. The futility tears at your soul. Guitars turn and wrench. Downstrokes turn to muted, insane chucking, like a swarm of locusts devouring your crops and heralding famine.
When the chorus finally comes around, there is relief. Relief at last, and a boast of invincibility.
This is a piece that you could score for an orchestra, were you mad enough. And by mad enough, I mean Abdul Alhazred-level insanity.
Do You Compute tones things down for a bit, only for Golden Brown to kick it right back up a notch, and the ferociousness doesn't stop there. Luau, a waltz from the bowels of hell itself, paints a picture of casual xenophobia with a touch of cosmic background radiation that sounds equally apropos as either an anthem for Hawaiian nationalism or as something to pump through the stereo of your dropship whilst scouring the bugs from Klendathu or the Tyranids from Macragge; the message remains essentially the same - purge the alien, then party on their graves. How incredibly... human.
Then Super Unison blasts you with thirty seconds of feedback and then runs you over like a locomotive made of downstrokes, drums stamping with fierce intensity like the side rods on a Union Pacific Big Boy, black smoke roiling into the sky, an almost tribal rhythm encouraging you to heap your own body onto the bonfire whilst Froberg sings of corruption and graft and disenfranchisement. There's a conspiracy, and now you're part of it. There's blood on your hands. Society lies bleeding, and you hold the killer's knife. You can't even be sure of yourself anymore.
New Intro provides a calm interlude before New Math and Human Interest tear out of the woods. You're in the movie Wrong Turn, and the invincible inbred hillbillies have electric guitars. This is what they serenade you with before they butcher you. You're racing between the trees, running for your life, splinters stuck in your feet. A branch trips you up. Game over. Sinews simmers off with a nice, slow outro.
And now, this is the part where I put it on loop. Forever.
I was lucky enough to see them perform live, for what might have been the last time. As I was leaving the venue, I heard someone say "I did NOT expect that". Well, that's the thing, really. He couldn't have expected it. Nobody can prepare themselves adequately for Jehu, because nothing else sounds exactly like this particular lineup. Some might call it Post-Hardcore or old-school Emo, but this work truly stands alone, defying classification. This is not Glassjaw, or Fugazi, or Slint. If you took the aforementioned acts and doused their members in gasoline, set them alight, and recorded their screams, it would still pale in comparison to the undiluted genius that is DLJ.
No wonder they split up after only two albums. Writing music like this requires sacrifice. It requires you to push yourself until you burn out. But still, even with the realization that asking Reis and crew for more of this pure, distilled madness would be foolhardy, my heart aches when I consider that there may never be a third Jehu album. No one else sounds like this, and by god, no one ever will.