Year: 2010
Time: 36:27
Size: 83,6 MB
Label: Ecstatic Peace/Universal Records
Styles: Garage Rock
Art: Front
Tracks Listing:
1. Transparent - 4:06
2. Flying - 4:07
3. Oaxaca - 6:47
4. White Cloud - 2:29
5. Vision - 3:18
6. Zombie - 4:39
7. Slaughterhouse - 4:24
8. IOU - 6:32
Massa Hypnos is such a boring mess of an album that reviewing it presents certain challenges. How many times can I tell you that a song just bored me? Opener “Transparent” starts off promisingly enough with some energetic riffing on the electric guitar, but quickly settles into a steady beat and riff that doesn’t give them much room to grow. This already puts me in a bad mood. Their last album Electric Aborigines may not have been a wholly enjoyable listen, but at least opened with a kickass rock song, “Eyes of Light.” This time around, they don’t seem to have any of that energy. The following track, “Flying,” is even more of a downer. It may be faster, but it’s not louder. In fact, it barely even sounds like Awesome Color, it sounds like a song from the 90s that was best forgotten. It’s a pop-rock song with none of the bluesy riffs that made Awesome Color awesome in the first place.
And since this is an eight track album, we’re a fourth of the way through by the time we get to “Oxaca,” a song that may have been able to anchor a stronger album. It starts with a forceful drum beat, and is joined by the bass and guitar which bring the song into a nice little groove. Three-minutes in, a noisy electric guitar solo enters to finish out the entire second half of the song. I suspect they might have been onto something with this one if they had done more to push it into the red. But as the song exists, it only stands out because the rest of the album is so dull.
Halfway markers “White Cloud” and “Vision” may have more energy than “Flying,” but two boring pop-rock songs were already too many. “Vision” has some more exciting guitar playing, but you wouldn’t be able to tell given that it’s buried in the mix (a remarkable feat since there are only three instruments there in the first place). But slowing the pace does the band no favors on “Zombie,” a song that lives up to its title. Here, the band settles into a gloomy mid-tempo rut that sounds full of self pity.
We might finally have a genuine rock song on our hands with “Slaughterhouse,” which opens with the first honest-to-god rock riff I’ve heard in a while. And when the rhythm section joins in we get a bass and drum pattern that manages to continually lift the song up. It’s the first time the band sounds like their having fun on this album, and (not coincidentally) it’s also the first time there is any fun to be had listening to it. Unfortunately, at seven tracks in with one to go, it’s too little too late. By the time we reach their album closer, “IOU,” the band sounds spent. The song’s melody isn’t half bad, but its production falls flat, and at six minutes it feels unbearably long. I’ve seen Awesome Color live once, and it seemed like they very deliberately set out to be a kick-ass rock band. Unfortunately, killer riffs don’t come along every day, and these guys haven’t figured out what to do without them.
Massa Hypnos
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