Every Time I Die - Ex Lives Review
Three years. Two members down. One supergroup.
rating: 5
Three years. Two members down. One supergroup. So filled the gap between Every Time I Dies last full length New Junk Aesthetic and the release of Ex Lives, the bands sixth album. So too in that time Keith Buckley, alongside fronting the more melodic The Damned Things (with Scott Ian and Rob Caggiano of Anthrax, Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley of Fall Out Boy and now former ETID bassist Josh Newton), hit those traumatic digits that cause dread in any young man. The first ones a three and the second ones a zero. Its the heavy cocktail of these events, incidents and milestones that inform the brunt of the lyrics Buckley lays down for this release and the themes they explore.
Theres a certain frustration for a band, and artist, fourteen years into their career, five albums down the line and a sixth ready to be unleashed, when it seems youve become the musical equivalent of a cult classic and your peers have risen to the top or even fallen by the way side. This special kind of frustration is spat all across the abrasive Underwater Bimbos From Outer Space, everyones first glimpse of the new album and its opening track. As it flicks like a switchblade between crushing frenetic riffs, grinds, grooves and breakdowns Buckley dishes the dirt with lines like were the last of the lost, but now were the first of the fashionably late and I refuse to be the only man put to rest in a mass grave... you were all there with me. http://youtu.be/Y1gi_aOe334 Whilst the band have got your attention they go for the throat. Two songs in less than four minutes. The relentless Holy Book of Dilemma that only lets up so you can nod your head whilst they hold your throat and groove out into the steady and stabbing chug of A Wild, Shameless Pain. These are just the first examples of the lean beast that this album is, all the fat has been cut off, theres only muscle to flex. The Big Dirty boasted Werewolfs party animal as its spirit, this albums Typical Miracle is being pulled between the road and home, pissed off with both Im bored as Hell in Sodom and Eden is just another dry county. Just one example of the conflict and frustration carrying this album through, caged on the underground in cult success the band are rattling that cages bars with an intent to break. Whereas previous ETID albums have each sported a certain colour and a certain sound that is spread throughout its runtime, Ex Lives sees them taking shades of each of those colours and bringing a new pallet along too. You get the thickness of tone and level production found on New Junk Aesthetic, the abrasive intricacies of Hot Damn! and the southern grooves of The Big Dirty, but then on top of that you get this dark, eery atmosphere and troubled melodies. Case in point and prime example being Revival Mode; melodious, slow-burning, atmospheric and staggering. http://youtu.be/AEp-Owhqbr0 Then theres the new weapons in the artillery, like the rollicking country metal of Partying Is Such Sweet Sorrow, and the huge stoner inflected Indian Giver coming across like whiskey drinking Yin to Torches happy stoner Yang. Or whichever way that misinterpretation of eastern Philosophy goes. You may have noticed somewhere up there, that I made use of some typically journalistic hyperbole about the band rattling the cage of underground and cult band status with the intent on breaking those bars. Well, whether its accurate or not in its own absurdity, that is whats going to happen. This album is heavy, bleak, pissed off, scared, depressed, conflicted and haunted, but its fucking infectious. Its probably the most enjoyable aggression youll hear this year.