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Album Review
by SashaS
9-8-2005
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| Chimaira's 'Chimaira' is a monumental CD |
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Chimaira: 'Chimaira'
(Roadrunner)
Chimaira in ‘third instalment is a MONSTER’!
Chimaira’s frontman Mark Hunter has put it aptly by qualifying the band’s self-titled third album as not “A ‘first listen’ record. People are going to listen and say, ‘This is interesting. I need to hear it again.’ By the third time they listen, they will go, ‘Whoa, I get it.’”
Very true, indeed. And in the process, mighty beyond your imagination, you may find yourself brain damaged… Erm, let me rephrase that - attitude damaged. Yeah, this album can, and will, alter your vision, standard and shift the quality bar for the entire genre.
Power and intelligence are combined in one fatal package that storms the fortress of loud-itude to such a pinnacle that the new level is reached, marked - no limits, no restraints. It is a record in search of anger and sense management: the guitar solos are freshly minted in Satan’s kiln, infernally hot and devastating everything in its path; adding electronic/ambient touch is the keysman Chris Spicuzza’s duty, whilst new drummer Kevin Talley provides vicious foundation that often sounds like it can rip your limbs off… even a heart.
After two-year road-trekking around the globe [330 shows in 21 countries informs us the (ac)counting PR person] the band had a burning desire to record some new songs and have gone after it with abandon, passion and headfirst. Imagine a heaving moshpit with all six members jumping in simultaneously - that’s how the LP feels.
From the opening ‘Nothing Remains’ - written on the day Dimebag Darrell was murdered although it’s got nothing to do with the late guitarist - it is a brutal, angry, strident, riotous statement to the maddening world. ‘Save Ourselves’ sounds like it’s been done in the middle of a crater that billows with magma of annihilation.
The disc’s musical language defies succumbing to the stylistic demands and it is wide, open, multi-layered, expanding and rousing sonic statements that is augmented with lyrics Hunter confessed to be more personal and not just ‘dissing’, the “‘f**k-you’ or a ‘Power-Trip’ songs.” ‘Lazarus’, the splendiferously dynamic closing track, is not about the biblical character but “a friend who committed suicide 11 years ago,” MH confessed before adding, “It‘s the most personal song I‘ve ever written and I got it out of my system.”
‘Chimaira’ is such a huge step - to equal Moon-sized first walk - from ‘The Impossibility Of Reason’ that you’ll not be able to listen to the rest of Metal anymore without expecting it to sound so forward. Upfront, brazen and major exertion.
‘Chimaira’ is the lethal weapon for mass destruction of your garden-variety muthas. Come to it, this makes Velvet Revolver sound like a retro-rocking bunch of the 1970s vintage!
9/10
SashaS
9-8-2005
Chimaira’s album ‘Chimaira’ is released 08 August 2005 by Roadrunner
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