Review: Gardenian - Sindustries
Being bored, I searched my music collection and dug out this little gem...Gardenian - Sindustries. Listening to it now.
I remember the first Gardenian I heard was the album after this, Soulburner. I loved that album, because the songs were heavy and yet catchy as well. The production was good, and I loved both the cleans and death vocals. But I quickly got bored of that album, because the songs were too predictable, and didn't have much depth.
When I got this album, first thing I noticed was that it was very different. The production is a lot crapper - the death vocals are the same but sound worse (production) and the clean vocals are by a different guy and dont sound as smooth. Rawer, I guess. The songs were longer as well, I'd say averaging about 6 minutes each. I didn't like this album - back then I went for the more traditional song structure, and was a sucker for production. I didn't appreciate musicianship as much as I do now.
Though I feel like recently I've gone though a stagnant era when it comes to my musical exploration, I still appreciate this album now. I mean, after 6 months or so of first hearing this album I started to like it (not as bad as Arcturus - The Sham Mirrors, which went from being an overpriced piece of rubbish to one of the finest masterpieces I'd heard - over a year later...somethings need time to grow on you).
Anyway, this album I feel is a lot better than its predecessor. The choruses, despite the bad production, can still be pretty catchy, but are less mindlessly heavy. The weak production adds somewhat to the rawness of the guitartone, and gives it a certain headbangery quality.
Each song carries a good deal of emotion (the vibe I generally get is a kind of sorrowful anger, bittnerness I guess, which is to be expected). Right now I'm listening to Heartless, one of my favourite tracks on the album. The melody on the 2nd guitar, which is mostly covered by the rhythm guitar, closely follows the rhythm but adds a nice quality. The guitars die down to acoustics in the verse, where the clean vocalist comes in with lines like ''If I give you site, I will stab my eyes...'', before it breaks down into the chorus with catchy lines like ''So we made a mess of our lives | I'll paint your world in black, too cold for you to get out''. Well, I'm not praising their lyrical abilities, but the vocals work, thats what matters.
Other good songs on that album are Courageous, Long Snap To Zero, Sonic Death Monkey (I AM YOU AND YOU ARE ME, MY SONIC DEATH MONKEY!) and Funeral, which has a lovely acoustic opening, and is a good finishing track.
I wouldn't say its one of my favourite albums of all time, but its a good, solid album that doesn't get old quick.
Posted by illogicist at 9:52 AM
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