If you are looking for a post-Valentine's/midterms cheerer-upper, you may as well stop right here. The new album from Wilderness, Vessel States opens with the gloomy wailing of "the blood is on the wall" and unlike what the cover art, composed of screamy highlighter-pink and hot-green colors, suggests the album is about as dark as winter solstice in the North Pole. To put across the point more clearly this is not some kind of sappy or pathetic album, Vessel States manages to stay clear of sentimentality thanks in part to singer James Johnson, who manages to sound like a caveman crooning along with his solid-like-a-rock band.
There is implicit (and sometimes explicit) political and historical commentary throughout the album that is more introverted and reflective than it is overtly critical. Johnson's lines are delivered in dispersed, often repeated cries that give the lyrics a sound of spontaneous and desperate frustration. The concoctions of bleak and miserable imagery are nihilistic to say the least. There are outright morbid lines like "Drink the breath of death" and more poignant commentary like "Discussion where is your gold mine?" Though Johnson occasionally seems to ponder off into schizophrenic logorrhea, the lyrics are enjoyable in that what initially strikes one as absurd and random eventually reveals thoughtful and sometimes striking meanings.
Gloomy words aside, Wilderness features some complicated song structures stretching far beyond the norm. The ominous guitars reach a potent organ-like sound in "Gravity Bent Light," and three chord structures are unheard of here. The bass delivers melancholic anxiety, revealing the band's dark nature, and the drumming is solid but rather conventional. The instruments constantly move in drawn-out visceral motions in line with the vocals. The sound is intriguing for a while, but after half the album when the tempo has not changed yet, it starts getting on your nerves. Each song moves like a gruesome animal crawl for four minutes and resumes in the same manner on the next track. Because of this, no track on the album sticks out as particularly memorable or different, and Vessel States desperately lacks a musical climax or Volta.
Lengthwise the album is stretched out as well. Although consisting of only nine tracks, they add up to a clean 40 minutes, rounded out with track lengths averaging around five minutes. Unfortunately for Vessel States, a more compressed intense sound would have been beneficial, as boredom is its greatest problem. The wailing, the slow beat, the stretched out chords seem filled to the brim with passion that is far too often suppressed.
Wilderness overall seems to be a band that moves a bit on the slower side. The four members have lived together in Baltimore, Md., since the band started up in 1995. Ten years of playing together, and bam they had their debut record out! It is pleasing to see a band that does not get signed immediately and still continues to work, but they should perhaps have returned home for more than a year to compose the second album when the debut was a three-year ordeal. There remain only a few leftovers of the innovation that perfectly lined the self-titled debut. The piano and occasional doubling on vocals that made it sonically more appealing and soft are absent on Vessel States, which otherwise does not feature any great progress. The album is consistently dark, bleak and, though Johnson's voice and the icy chords may sometimes make your skin crawl, somewhat tedious.
Wilderness has achieved respectable comparisons to bands like Savage Republic, Public Image Ltd. and Joy Division that are only partially understandable. Rather than being considered predecessors, they are parallels to the Wilderness' sound distinctly their own. As experimental rock is inclined to do, Wilderness grows on you as slowly and creepily as Johnson's warbling. But the experimentalism never reaches further than the fact of merely being unconventional, which is far less than desired from this disciplined and devoted band's sophomore effort. Though moving moments exist, the staggering, gloomy tempo of the band is never switched up and leaves the listener ready to turn elsewhere after just a few tracks. This album is not for every person and certainly not for every mood.
Rating: 2 of out 5
