Denial of Death

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

Well, my copy arrived.  Wow.

Really: *Wow*!  I don't think it's just the sheen of newness that has
me thinking this is the best Brain Surgeons disc yet.  And this goes
on being just a great tBS record, this is a great rock record,
period.  You can feel it on every 1 and 0: this disc has a 'tude a
mile long, and every note comes out swinging, ready for a fight.  I'm
not going to make some ridiculous claim that every song is the
greatest ever written, but pretty much every song *acts* like it is.

A few brief notes:

As soon as it arrived, I crunched down the tracks and slapped 'em on
the iPod and didn't even even bother too turn off the song shuffle....

So the first track that popped up was actually "Lonestar".  Woah,
this was like the heaviest ZZ Top song Billy Gibbons wishes he'd
recorded :)  Like if everyone in the video was in leather, had
firecrackers in their beards, and the car was an jet-powered dragster
with scythes on its hub caps and a grinning longhorn skull for a hood
ornament.  Last exit to Texas, indeed .....

1864: Damn, I had to look down and check that the iPod hadn't just
cued my Motorhead track instead.  Brutal opening that would do Lemmy
proud, and it never lets up.  Finest tribute to an ancestor yet
committed to disc :)

Constantine's Sword: Fabulous chugging on the chorus (dangerously
catchy, actually), and the false ending that cuts to shredly boogie
is all class.

Man, ever time I fire up a new track, I think "OK, I'm bound not to
like this one at last."  And I think, "Huh, that _is_ a great
riff .... Oh, this one rocks, too!" :)  I was prepared to decide
"Strange Like Me" was going to be the token weak acousticky track,
but then it too turns out to kick, and has outrageous flamencoid
shredding sprayed all over it :)

So, to reduce the risk of just keep gushing on a song by song basis,
I'll sum up:  This is a mighty rock record.  It comes over like it
wants to steal your children -- or at least have your children, then
steal them.  Ross is the catalyst for this exothermic reaction: the
disc is absolutely packed with muscle-bound guitar.  I honestly don't
know if there's a track that a major label exec would point to as hit
single material, but that hardly matters in this context -- the
important thing is that I haven't found a track that I want to skip
over.

Oh, I like this record!  Definitely one of the best I've heard in the
last few years :)

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
http://www.carlaz.com/