Drown
Product of a Two-Faced World
Slipdisc
Drown been getting quite a “buzz” lately, and this album deserves it. Lined-up next to a lot of the other late-1990’s era hardcore/hip-hop (core-hop? Hip-core?), Drown holds their own as an aggressive, straight-ahead outfit. They’ve taken the best of the Nine Inch Nails’ industrial side and fused it with more metal guitars and a big city hardcore attitude. Songs like “Two Faced You” and “My Private War” are enough to make it clear that Drown is about high-energy releases.
What I think puts them over the top is their cover of Big Black’s “Kerosene.” It’s one of the most intense, brutal, and beautiful songs Big Black ever recorded. Drown has taken it and added an industrial metal background, intensifying the personal agony embedded in the song. Perhaps, then, what Drown has accomplished is what Life of Agony should have: intensely personal songs slammed out with reckless abandon, but with an excellent hardcore/industrial sensibility. “Alone in a Dirty World” and “Tired of Living Like This,” whose titles definitely illustrate my point. This is an impressive, deeply personal and tremendously heavy album. Fans of industrial metal and hardcore will not be able to get enough of it.
SlipDisc Records, 101 W. Grand, 6th Floor, Chicago, IL 60610
