Car Bomb
Meta
(Self-Release)
It’s always eye-catching to spot an album cover under the metal section of any store that isn’t sporting unsaturated grayscale, let alone an album cover that could very well be mistaken for an Animal Collective LP. Like their last work, Car Bomb continues in similar what-genre-is-this album aesthetic with their abstract looking Meta.
Probably the first noticeable thing about Meta is how much better the production value is than on w^w^^w^w (or “Waveforms” for anyone who wants to actually mention the album in public). The lower-end muddiness that plagues so many startup metal albums is gone, and the clicking of the kick drum is dialed back to unobnoxious levels.
Nitpicking aside, the actual content of the songs is just as good if not better than their last effort. For anyone unfamiliar with the band and too hesitant to type their name into a search engine in a post-911 surveillance state, Car Bomb’s sound stands out with their awkward as hell grooves; grooves that are so disjunct and off kilter that they sound wrong. Another defining character of the band’s sound is to make guitar noises that sound like the listener’s sound system might be malfunctioning.
Unique to Meta, however, is its direction. The tracks seem more confidently strung together this time through, and this can be hinted at in the band’s increased use of melodic content, along with certain honed techniques such as chromatic glissandos, which are used as main riffs for the stronger tracks of “From the Dust of This Planet” and “Sets.”
And, in almost seeming esprit de w^w^^w^w, the fourth song “Gratitude” shows off the band’s melodic prowess, only this time they do so through the impressive use of a guitar sound that normally reminds one of robotic pig squeals or broken windshield wipers.
All in all, what a band like Car Bomb sets out to achieve is important, whether it’s to make guitars sound like sci-fi blasters along with bands such as Psyopus, or to groove in made-up sounding time signatures with other lesser known kin of Rejectionary Art or 1980. What they do is especially important in a culture where techniques like grooving becomes trendy and cosmetic, and where even some leading figureheads of the style become lax with their use.
Not only does Car Bomb implement these stylings tastefully well, but they actually improve upon what everyone else is doing and set new standards just like said figureheads that came before them. And whether what they’re doing turns out to be another new esoteric niche or not, it’s these kind of niches that retain the potentiality of other bands jumping in and forming completely new subgenres in and of themselves.
