Darwin’s Waiting Room
Orphan
MCA
Oh, the horror• Seriously, this not-so-newfangled nonsense is nearing critical mass, the bogus-from-the-beginning party being overcrowded by charlatans in a scene already run by charlatans, a sure-fire way to get signed and get your shitty record in the grubby hands of fools across America and abroad. Painful case in point: Darwin’s Waiting Room and their Orphan debut. The formula (keenly note: formula) is simple • so impossibly simple and cloyingly contrived, in fact, it defies mortal reason: Wannabe-Tool via Disturbed clean vox overlapping with wannabe-neurotic n’ hand-wringingly angsty raps that are mostly whiney n’ annoying, wannabe-Wes Borland guitars that stab at stark minimalism but mostly strike nothing, rhythms that go hippity-hop often and to nowhere, and ‘course, zero-IQ stutter-chug schooled by Mr. Pro Tools. Really, there’s no way around the transparency of Darwin’s Waiting Room and all those who’ve come before them and those yet to come, the cruel irony being that this whole pose is wholly based on guaranteeing some iota of “emotion,” “integrity,” or • egad! • “skill.” I’m not buying it, but a lot of morons are, so we’ve got one more social problem to add to the already large laundry list of cultural conundrums caused by popular music. As they plead in “D.I.Y.M.,” “Judge me on my skills, say that shit to my face”: Okay, guys, be prepared to get raked over the coals many more times over • you deserve it. Is there such a thing as a deportation program for clone bands? Darwin would definitely be waiting on that.
MCA Records, 2220 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90404; http://www.mcarecords.com, http://www.darwinswaitingroom.com
