REVIEWS:
Post your comments about Leader Dogs For The Blind
(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
HIGH POINTS: Better Ways, Sprout, Lemonade, Ripple, Yellow And Black Attack, The Weather. LOW POINTS: None.
It’s hard to know what you define as newmetal. I mean, does it have to be MTV’s newest hip metal act or can it be someone a little deeper underground? Take this band here, for example. One album, an album that most people have never heard of, but if you want to get technical you could easily make a case for being a newmetal release, since this is metal of the 90s, and we aren’t talking Iced Earth or Blind Guardian here. The point of this intro? The album rules, and since finally taking it out to listen to a little while ago I’m not sure I can call kLaNk’s Still Suffering or Tool’s Aenima my favorite release from this Godforsaken genre. What we have here is an amazingly melodic and emotional hard rock/heavy metal release, with a cover directly ripped off of Pearl Jam’s VS.
Like any good release of this type there are two different types of songs on the album: the slow ones and the fast ones. The melodic and the intense, and luckily for us both are superb. “Yellow And Black Attack” and “The Weather” are the best of the more intense set of songs, the former especially plowing down everything in its path with tremendous energy. A deep, dark bassline leads “Ripple” though a slower pace, though it may be the actual heaviest song on the album with effective shouts out through the chorus building up a strong mood for the music.
But overall I think the best songs on the album tend to be the slower more melodic ones. My favorite song on here is “Better Ways” which builds itself on both the heavy shouts and peaceful calls of the singer whose name escapes me at the moment. Twice it returns to a poem comparing a withering flower to life in a way that may seem corny, but backed by the music it works very well. Another high point from the melodic entries comes with the closing “Sprout,” which is as far from metal as you can get. The guitarist takes the vocals for the guitar-only entry, about how much he wants to see his soon to be born child, and how “you already bring a smile just thinking soon we’ll walk awhile,” told in a personal and hopeful way, making it another of the best on here.
The band also does a quick exploration with the second side opener “Radiant Abyss,” where a voice recites a few lines of writing (by C. S. Lewis, I think) backed by all sorts of weird and tribal sounds. For an experiment like this done by this sort of band it comes out to be a great success, building a dark mood quite effectively. And finally there’s “Lemonade,” proving that the band proves that in the midst of all of the other songs they do maintain a sense of humor as the song builds a powerful and dramatic account of a man buying a couple cups of lemonade. It’s told in the exact same style as most of the other, more serious songs, and fits in perfectly, which amazes me. But to put it simply this is one of the best hard rock/heavy metal albums of the mid 90s, and what you want to label it as is up to you. Any label is just fine as long as it has the word "great" included in it.
Post your comments / reviews for this album
COMMENTS
I know its probably really late in coming, but I personally loved this album. I lent it to a friend and he lost it with a bunch of his when he left it on the top of his car. So I am desperately looking for it. Know where I can look?
Cornell in Vermont
By far this is one of the best albums I have listened to in my whole 28 years of living. But I was destroyed when my copy was stolen by an old Pastor of a church I went to years ago, who claimed falsely and boldly that I gave them to him. Lying sack of shit! Can anyone help me find another or atleast a burnt copy?
Index | Main band/artist reviews page