Prong - Cleansing
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Prong’s Cleansing turned 15 yesterday. Does anyone care besides me? Prong is not exactly hip right now. Tommy Victor’s bandmates on this record are known more for their gigs afterwards – Godflesh and Jesu for drummer Ted Parsons, Killing Joke and Ministry for bassist Raven (RIP), Fear Factory and Ascension of the Watchers for keyboardist John Bechdel. Still, I have listened to Cleansing for almost half of my life. It is one of the top 10 records I have heard the most.
A big reason is the sound. The guitars are monstrous, the bass is warm, and the vocals are dry. Terry Date’s production is perfect – clear and compressed, but with snap in the snares. (He’s done some great-sounding records: Horrorscope, Time Does Not Heal, the first three Pantera albums.) This is about the most compression I can take in a record. Any more, which is pretty much on every modern metal album, and things sound like plastic.
The songs, of course, are paramount. Each one is distinct; a part of me lights up at the start of every one. (When was the last time an album did that to you?) “Another Worldly Device,” “Whose Fist Is This Anyway?” and “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck” form one of the strongest album starts ever. But then things get weird. The A-side is all anthems, and the B-side is, well, all B-sides. These quirkier tunes aren’t necessarily weaker, though “Out of This Misery” makes one wish for that fate. In fact, I’ve grown to love most of them, as they demonstrate Victor’s incredible skills. Only Dimebag Darrell is more inventive as a metal rhythm guitarist.
“Cut-Rate” and “Home Rule” are good examples. The former opens with a flurry of flams, then cuts away at 0:10 to one of the most godlike cutaways ever. It never fails to incite invisible oranges in me, plus yelling and hopping around. At 1:43 begins a live wire of a solo that warbles up and down before crumbling under a whammy bar dump. Victor yells, “Clean sweep!” Sound and word unite. 30 seconds later, the song seemingly ends. But no – a collage of soundbites, then one of those cold, tribal dubs Prong does so well.
Cleansing‘s second half has many un-metal song intros: wah-wah guitars and twangy clean tones that get steamrolled by distortion. “Home Rule” fakes James Brown chords before doomy riffs crush them. Ted Parsons propels the verses with sock-hop snares, then pulls back in the choruses, which alternate between 6/4 and 8/4. The bridge, starting at 2:51, features gunshot reverbs on snares – again, shades of dub. Parsons is Cleansing‘s engine. His beats are seemingly mechanical, but they groove like a mother. Humans portraying mechanization are much more interesting than machines doing so. Cleansing gets tagged as industrial metal, but when Victor says, “You want the good life / You break your back / You snap your fingers / You snap your neck,” the feeling is all too human.
