On occasions, the rush of excitement that always comes from record browsing can get the better of me. The rule I am not learning is to give something a listen before parting with your hard earned cash! Given that PWEI blew me away with their sophomore record, This Is The Day, I was happy to jump straight in! That album was a time capsule of nostalgic innocence, reflecting the cultures of the day. It spoke directly to musical scenes before my time that Ive always been fascinated with. Looking to follow up, the acclaim mentioned in breath of their debut Box Frenzy had me pick it. Sadly the horrors I've found have me wanting to give up. I can firmly say its quite awful.
I'll be blunt with my words but a handful of listens has improved my tolerance. In a nutshell, everything "edgy" of the time retroactively sounds stale, dated and damn right corny! Fueled on by the Run DMC Rap sound, these youthful twenty-somethings hinged all of their songwriting on aesthetics that have died off. Box Frenzy is forty three minutes of unabashed punchy tone abuse, taking synthesized 80s sounds and running them through the mills on old school drum machines and retro keyboards. These arrangements are stark with spacious drum grooves droning away, accompanied by obnoxious "sound effects" and Walk This Way inspired guitar stabs.
The lyrical content is often cheap and cheesy, atypical 80s rapping flows with a lack of underpinning substance. The spirit of these songs reminding me of "dated" party songs, the sort of unbearable 80s tunes encouraging kids to do a variety of then trendy dance moves and routines, hinged on gimmick and novelty. That in your face cheese is tiring but also entirely the point. For 1987 I can see how this would have been on the edge and pulled in praise but having little nostalgia for this particularly disposable and dated sound, Its no surprise it turned me off.
I've been cruel so far and I must say the foundations of what made This Is The Day is firmly heard on this record. A few tracks have something good to offer in the way of groove and energy but the aesthetics tend to be a bit to grating. There is also the term Grebo mentioned here. Labelled as "Grebo Rock" its a curious disconnect from how the term was used in my youth to label the alternative crowd I then Identified with. Seems the term has roots that extend back to the 80s, and a sound I wouldn't associate with the Nu Metal and Gothic music of my youth. This introduction won't have me looking much further though!
Rating: 3/10