Birth of the bizarre: alt-metal version. – 75%
fonte: metallum encyclopaedia, hells_unicorn
Contrary to what many believe, the phenomenon known as alternative metal is actually about as old as the early post-NWOBHM period that birthed the thrash metal sub-genre, if not older. It’s sort of along the lines of that oddball cousin in the family that everyone thinks will end up flipping burgers his entire life, yet somehow towards the end of everybody’s life it comes to light that he struck it big in the petroleum industry and left a hefty inheritance to people outside the family as payback for their dismissive attitude towards his hopes and dreams. Naturally this is an exaggeration, as the metal community was probably more ambivalent towards what the early Avant-garde had to offer in the 1980s than outright hostile, especially given that many of the early pioneers of America’s booming heavy metal scene were not wholly averse to experimentation. As with much of the trailblazing material that pushed the evolutionary envelope of metal in the 80s, all roads lead to California, and particularly San Francisco. Somewhere between the extremes of the fun-loving 60s counterculture and the cynical rage of the Bay Area thrash metal scene that said city birthed stands Faith No More, itself a veritable middle-ground between the two that left much of the musical world with question marks floating above their heads when they first hit the circuit.
Originally conceived as a band following the early 80s new wave/post-punk scene where synths and quirky/eclectic genre-splicing were the norm, this band would seem the most unlikely candidate for metal status, save the involvement of one particular person in guitarist Jim Martin. Having grown up with and worked in associated bands with Metallica bassist Cliff Burton, Martin offers up a very overt element of thrash riffing and a Toni Iommi-inspired bite into what would otherwise be an extremely trippy take on a jam session featuring Talking Heads. That’s essentially the formula behind this band’s rather obscure and bizarre debut We Care A Lot, a quasi-metallic experiment that is weird enough to pass for the Care Bears starting a metal band, and yes that was the first picture that popped in my head when seeing this album’s title. Between the tribal mystic rhythms of Mike Bordin, the funky bass work of Billy Gould (think Flea, minus the naked hippy visual that most sane rational people fight to forget) and the spacey keyboard work of Roddy Bottum this thing just pours on the strange until it gives Geddy Lee nightmares about Miley Cyrus. Yet all of this pales in comparison to the rambling mutters and sometimes flat sounding vocalizations of Chuck Mosley, who’s vocals exist somewhere between rapping and singing, yet somehow manage to be charismatic and a mediating influence between the musical chaos behind them.
With most metal albums, even the odd ones, the ebb and flow of things normally revolves around intensity, but generally speaking this is more of a uniform endeavor when it comes to heaviness, and contrasts come more in the form of non-metal influences and how bizarrely they interact with a fairly static metallic elements. When hearing the more rocking character of “As The Worm Turns” and “Mark Bowen”, they could probably pass for precursors to “From Out Of Nowhere” were they less dominated by the keyboards and accompanied by a more groovy, slow-paced rhythm section. The same story holds true for the quirky, tribal chanting character of “The Jungle”, as Martin’s guitar work is driving in character yet fairly plain and finds itself fighting the keyboards for prominence. Perhaps the intensity level could be described as easing off a bit on the funky title song “We Care A Lot” and the similarly groovy and chanting “Greed”, but the average ear would probably hear these songs more as Red Hot Chili Pepper nods slightly before there was such a thing than dwell upon the drawn back character of the guitars relative to other songs. Even if one wished to note a certain consistency in the interplay between the guitars and the rest of the arrangement, it tends to go out the window on the synth-pop infused weirdness of “Arabian Disco” and “New Beginnings”, let alone the short classical guitar ditty simply called “Jim” that comes completely out of left field.
One thing that should keep coming back into the thought process of anyone approaching an album like this is that while it is tempting to dismiss it as a non-metal aberration by a band with a very loose relationship with the genre as it is, history tends to see things differently. Barring the band’s fairly close association with both the Red Hot Chili Peppers (who also came into existence at around the time that Jim Martin and Chuck Mosley came into the fold) and the post-punk scene, this album can be best likened to a metal album that just got high one day and then wandered off, ergo Black Sabbath in the late 70s prior to Ozzy getting booted. There is nothing to speak of on here that screams technical proficiency save a few isolated spots out of the bass and keyboards, nor anything that gets remarkably heavy or dynamic. This is an album that lives largely off of atmosphere and mixing seemingly contradictory elements into a shepherd’s pie of sound, and that’s how it should be approached, regardless of how odd it may seem to picture Grumpy Bear shouting into a microphone about Cabbage Patch Kids, Mr. T and world politics while Tenderheart and company provide the background music.
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