REVIEW: Genghis Tron – Board Up the House

Genghis Tron are an enigma in more ways then one; the most obvious way is their musical style, which is so insanely unique and erratic you can't help but love it. They are also an enigma in that if you trace the path from Cloak of Love, to Dead Mountain Mouth and finally the new full length Board Up The House, you're left wondering how the fuck they ever got from one point to the other.

Just like Dead Mountain Mouth was a huge stylistic departure from Cloak of Love, so too is Board up the House from Dead Mountain Mouth. Now, I'm not sure about other Tron fans out there, but I was introduced to Cloak of Love shortly after it was released and I fucking loved it. I thought it was the best goddamn piece of music I'd heard in a long while. Maybe that’s overkill, but I did love it every single second of it. When I heard they were recording a full length album I was like a little fucking fat kid with candy hearing promises of even more candy to come.

What I loved most about it was the insane genre hopping; from grindcore to breakbeats, to swing, to hardcore breakdowns with ridiculous guitar tapping to calming ambiance. I loved the silly and totally inappropriate jumps into various electronic sub– genres – the music’s stubborn sporadic– ness flew in the face of good taste and commercial appeal. It was obvious Cloak of Love was the product of two bored, motivated College students with some insane ideas to entertain themselves.

When I first heard Dead Mountain Mouth it was a massive disappointment. I couldn’t hear any of the elements that made me love the first release. It took me a while for the album to grow on me – and while I don't strongly dislike it like the first time around, it still feel mediocre. There is nothing extra ordinary about it. Genghis Tron had become 'serious', so each track was comprised of 1 or 2 ideas and drawn out over a longer period, instead of being injected with 10 to 15 ideas and changes over a two minute space.

The bottom line is, the album was more serious and less fun.

Now we come to Board Up The House, which has some of the best cover art I have seen in a long time. Seriously, the first time I saw that cover I went onto Relapse Records and pre– ordered the album. I'm going to keep searching for a poster of it, because I am totally addicted to that artwork.

Shame I can't say the same about this album.

Genghis Tron have now replaced the majority of their drum samples with samples that sound like real drums... umm so what’s the point of that? Now the drums just sound like every other band. The band still have the fairly unique guitar sound and the same vocals, but there are massive changes in the song structures – like a lack of variation.

Forget genre hopping, for most of the album Genghis Tron tries to be Converge with a few modern hardcore/mathcore touches – and that’s not a good thing. We get loads of hardcore beats, and metallic hardcore riffs and a few little scattered blasts in between huge drawn out breakdown passages with token ambiance – and that’s what the majority of the electronic influence; token.

The band have moved from a massive spectrum of sounds and styles to Converge with token electronic ambiance. Wow, a handful of clicks and a synth building for 4 minutes – SNORE! There are a handful of interesting moments, but for the mostpart this is another letdown of epic proportions.

Bland boring bland bland boring bland stale. Go stand over there with Dillinger Escape Plan. Is it all a coincidence all these Relapse bands are going more mainstream and sucking more cock?

http://www.myspace.com/genghistron