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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Juggernautz Artist: Juggernautz Label: Metro One Time: 10 tracks/38:59 minutes To call the publicity sheets accompanying this review copy misleading would be an understatement at best. "Think Prodigy. Think the Chemical Brothers. That's the neighborhood," it recklessly suggests. Jyro Xhan's new project sounds less like the United Kingdom's leading purveyors of dark electro-pop than it does to bands more familiar to the Christian bookshop browser's ear. Think The Echoing Green and Massivivid on a trip to their local planetarium or meteorological center, writing songs awash with references to the sun, stars, sky, ultra silver light, silver rain, hurricanes, oceans, waterfalls, pulsars and planets. The latter comparison is particularly apt from the outset. "The Reach" sounds uncannily like an unreleased song from Massivivid's Brightblur, all programmed beats and semi-distorted (and somewhat bland) power chords. Intriguing lyrics, reasonable structure, average melody, but totally forgettable. It all sounds so familiar. The second installment, ! "UR," continues the Massivivid comparison, but has its flabby underbelly injected with a syringe of Fold Zandura's melodic brightness. Not that this makes a dull song a remarkable one, it just hints at Juggernautz's roots. "You are the Light" has a similar melodic moment, but is essentially Fold Zandura without the polished hooks. It all sounds so safe. It is not without irony then, that two of the best tracks on the album are, at least on paper, the safest. "Mandarin Sky," a simple psalm-like worship song (confusingly dedicated to Gene Eugene), relinquishes the big mechanised drum sounds and flat guitars for a delicately layered, spacey female vocal and very sparse electronic backing. The melody is simple but haunting, the perfect vehicle for the lyric "mandarin sky has filled my eyes/rivers of jade/I am complete beneath your shade." The next track, "Pacificoaster" has a similarly serene feel, but adopts a bigger beat and a heavily processed vocal. Less a song than a soundtrack, but good nonetheless. The only genuinely great song that employs a heavier beat and guitars is "Don't Be Afraid," which marries the more sinister overtones of older Mortal material with the simple and positive admonishment, "don't be afraid or troubled/don't fear the past or future/don't be afraid or troubled/God holds today and tomorrow." It is also the only song to successfully use a semi-spoken/sub-rapped vocal in the verse (Project 86 would call it a rhythmic vocal delivery, NOT rap). "Fury" and "Believing" both make similar attempts, the former being unremarkable and the latter horrible, easily the worst song on the album. From the cheesetastic opening lines "come together people yeah people come together," "Believing" is a downward slide, Jyro Xhan meets the World Wide Message Tribe at their most banal. It also takes the prize for most likely to become a youth group mantra, with its closing lines, "one Man for every season/one truth for every reason/one love that's worth receiving/one God who's worth believing in." Juggernautz is competent without being remarkable. Fans of Massivivid
and The Echoing Green may well find something here digestible, but you
can't help suspect that Jyro Xhan's fans will miss the dark, dense jungle
of Mortal and the sweet tunefulness of Fold Zandura.
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