Don’t go looking for pretty little melodies or sugary sweet cotton candy pop on Bumblebeast’s A Feeble Echo of the Life of God. There might be cotton candy involved, but I’m pretty sure it was laced with acid.
This Murfreesboro foursome is doing that experimental, caustic noise thing. They may not want to be compared to Nine Inch Nails, but the dominos line up, and it sounds a lot like what Reznor has been doing for the past 10 years, a lot of layers dressed up with a little bit of ugly.
And let’s not forget angry. There’s something undeniably sexy about these mad, rambling industrial songs. There are no lightweight beats here. Mechanic vocals that are impossible to understand make up one more layer of the fray, and imperceptible vocals are just so damn intriguing. The yelling and trippy guitar work are much more late Beatles than NIN, and the judicious mixing of the twain is stimulating.
The first track, “(New Directions in) Hugh Grant,” is probably the most readily adaptable for mass consumption, even if only by Aphex Twin fans.
If it’s at all possible, you must listen to track three, “Nazilichen,” on a surround sound system. My little Mac speakers don’t do the track justice, much like Tool’s “(-) Ions.”
Despite their obvious mission to ugly up some sound, break some barriers and make indie rock kids jealous of their awesomeness, I stayed on board for most of this album. Track five, “Bart Durham’s Beach Dungeon,” is like an 11-minute trip on Mr. Roger’s trolley to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. But, even through that, they didn’t lose me (possibly because of the Mr. Roger’s train of thought).
They lost me on the last track, “Go With God,” a mishmoshed babble of voices that takes the disorderly-order sensibility a little too far. It sounds like they got messed up with a bunch of their friends and layered the recordings of what each of them said. Again, it’s reminiscent of the Beatles. Maybe I should take some acid before I listen to it again.