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iwrestledabearonce

Late For Nothing

Written by: JWM on 24/11/2013 23:44:05

When I think of Louisiana based grammar nightmare "iwrestledabearonce" (here after simply IWABO) I think of that super zany kid you knew in school. That one with unfathomable amounts of energy in their teen years that made a lot of noise and made it an all around intense experience just to be around them. But when they grew up, they became a little dull, and any craziness they exhume is now more a nostalgic shadow of their past selves. And you wonder what made them so zany: Was it the drugs? Was it the heart stopping amount of caffeine? Was is the combination of wanting to be the special snowflake and the centre of attention? Or did they genuinely know their unconventionality would work for a gimmick?

"The light that shines twice as bright, burns for half as long" Dr. Eldon Tyrell arrogantly states on superb cyberpunk piece Blade Runner, and indeed, IWABO's light has shone bright. The band has been everywhere, puked on every stage and thrown blast beats into every genre you could think of. And it still both frustrates and fascinates me when a band like theirs is signed to Century Media, when that label just recently dropped a promising act like Architects, and bands like Rolo Tomassi still walk the earth appealing to the individual, rather than the crowd. But none the less, we now are faced with album number three, "Late For Nothing".

The tragedy starts with the farewell of Krysta Cameron, the band's now knocked up singer who for three records since 2007 was truly unappreciated in her talents, with a vocal range that made her sound like a glorious fluctuation between Björk and Mitch Lucker, she truly was a prised possession. So it must have been apt in the band's collective consciousness to recruit Courtney LaPlante who is exactly the same vocalist but inferior in every way.

It already feels poor when a thrash metal riff starts over a electro beat and just spirals into loose chaos in "Thunder Chunky". You feel all the genre "experimentation" has dissipated as they try to write legit songs. "Snake Charmer" is the only highlight as a Malifice-aligned thrashy deathcore tune, only it gets bogged down by boring vocals and too many pinch harmonies for me to count. This is also valid for "The Map" which once again gets weighed down by the exact same carcinogenic issues of both "Snake Charmer" and, in turn, the rest of the album. The fact is that the album is more a string of "cool bits" rather than actually well crafted songs.

This is still grindcore then, in the "I'm slamming at my guitar and drum set with low pitched screams omfg what is happening lol im in a band mom" kind of way, and it is about as progressive as adding a brass or string instrument into an outro and making a hardcore kid who has never heard an artist outside of their four sub-sub-sub genres of choice say: "wow. much instrument. very art". I am just not so fooled, because when you're a band which building your career on a funny name, an ironic mickey take of the very genres you play and a use of the General Lee in a song break, your career tastes a lot less like Kevin Bacon when you try to take things much more seriously and fail. And I think when you've got to that point, perhaps its time to get a new project or seriously re-think the band?

Download: Snake Charmer
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Release Date 06.08.2013
Century Media