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Gaza’s new album illustrates the potential gulf between live and recorded music. Live, Gaza have a fearsome reputation. Their legendary set at Dude Fest this year involved people stage-diving into a moshpit onstage. I’m not sure what that has to do with music, but it’s useful for myth-making.
For me, Gaza’s myth began with 2006’s I Don’t Care Where I Go When I Die. True to its title, it sounded like someone gutting himself in front of you. Guitars and vocals stood in for rusty blades. In today’s generation of bands fusing everything -core (mathcore, grindcore, hardcore) with sludge, noise, and whatever else is on the iPod — see Trap Them, Ed Gein, and Premonitions of War, to name a few — Gaza are perhaps the most “extreme.”
He Is Never Coming Back (Blackmarket Activities/Metal Blade, 2009) dims their ragged energy. The sound isn’t clean, but it’s cleaner now. The mastering is over-compressed, which rounds off the jaggedness that made I Don’t Care hazardous. Now the band just sounds loud. It’s also more given to shuddering doom, which gets exhausting over 51 minutes. I’ve listened to this record many times, and I still can’t prise songs out of it. Some riffs jump out — the big-bearded opening theme, the loopy pull-offs of “Windowless House.” Otherwise, it’s constant force-feeding, with pretty chords for breathers. What’s the point of a record if “you have to see the band live”?
Buy:
Gaza (CD)
Amazon (CD)
Amazon (MP3)
Relapse (CD)
Metal Blade (CD)
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Why is there hype around this band? I admit I can't tell good -core from bad -core.
After such a long break between records I was really looking forward to this and was totally disappointed with how tame it turned out to be.
I've listened to it 5 or 6 times and actually enjoy the cleaner sound and the CD as a whole. I didn't like the muddy production of "I Don't Care Where I Go When I Die". I actually think they stepped it up a notch.
glad you got around to this. this is about the reaction i thought you might have
I like it, but not as much as I Dont Care
everyone seems to dislike this record. you know when a band has created something amazing, something masterful, something above and beyond: when the "fans" hate it. this record could best be described as brutal-core; it's simply brutal. i'll admit, I Don't Care… had a lot of hooks, but He Is Never Coming Back dominates exceedingly. it's one of those "i don't get it" albums the first few times through, but once that light bulb flashes, you'll understand; when you "get it," you'll know.