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| The Killing Tree > Albums & Lyrics |
So what is it with this stuff anyway? When did hardcore start getting ambitious? What band worth its salt sings decipherable lyrics? Since when did we ok six-minute songs? Concept albums? C'mon people! I know that Damaged had a couple of long numbers, but it also had "Rise Above" and "TV Party." The Killing Tree are trying desperately not to be a cookie cutter hardcore band, and, fortunately, they succeed. The results of their progression, however, are quite mixed.
The Killing Tree is a Chicago-based hardcore band. They have band history (singer/guitarist Tim McCrilth formerly played in Rise Against) and a celebrity producer (Matt Allison of The Alkaline Trio and Lawrence Arms) to recommend them. As mentioned earlier, they seem to want to eschew the standard hardcore formula in favor of longer songs, artsy passages, and at least a bit more singing than most hardcore acts are accustomed to using. Unfortunately, they make the progression in just about every area but sound.
The album opens with "Prelude to Pain," a dynamic, if unmemorable number that clocks in at almost six full minutes. Such is the case for most of the songs on The Romance of Helen Trent. This is a nice idea in theory - Isis has been glacially expanding hardcore ideas for a half decade now - but the songs and their parts aren't varied enough to make this approach anything but tiring. If it seems like I'm making a big deal of the song lengths, it's because I am. Although I appreciate that The Killing Tree doesn't want to play the 90-second race to the finish aesthetic employed by many of their peers, without enough sonic ideas a six-minute song becomes very, very trying.
Fortunately, the second song, "Them's Fighin' Words," is much easier on the ears than the lead track. It's much lighter in mood and contains the sort of dueling vocal scream-a-thons usually found on Hot Water Music albums. The singer sets aside his shredded voice for a song and sings in a confident tenor, and the backing vocals are appropriately intense. Another highlight comes with "The Perfect." It sounds like an At the Drive-In minus Cedric Bixler's Bono-impressions and adopted a healthy guttural howl. The casual speaking cadence of the lyrics in "Counting to Infinity" remind me of …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, both in their imagery and self-importance.
There appears to be some sort of plot running through The Romance of Helen Trent. The title of the album and the occasional spoken word segments that the band inserts between some of the songs suggest this, but quite frankly I couldn't care less about this. I shouldn't have to search for a story, and quite frankly, this whole aspect of the album matters very little in my opinion of it. It's nice to a see a band branch out and try something new in a genre that's been running on fumes for a decade and a half, but without more ideas and more direction, the valiant, misguided efforts of The Killing Tree will go unnoticed.
- Andrew
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