The great contradiction that plagues City of Echoes lies in the heart of HydraHead's website. Take a stroll down to hydrahead.com, click on "Contact" then "Demo Submissions," and the arrogance of the label jumps right out at you: "If you haven't heard our previous releases, which by now is pretty much near-impossible, please save your money and time." I guess no one at Hydrahead bothered to listen to Pelican's new CD before approving it for release, because it is really not fooling anyone.
After a quite successful sophomore album in which Pelican quickly gained notoriety outside of the instrumental rock and metal crowds, there's not much else the band can do but decline in quality. The implication is that the band has reached its peak, which is certainly not the claim that I am making; all things considered, Pelican is hardly what we would call an "experimental" act, and the instruments and structures they call upon en route to crafting an album are very limited, so there's little reason to suspect that they'd be totally reinventing their sound over the course of a single album. Bands like Pelican take years to get from point A to point B, and in the meantime we watch them stumble and fall. And so it's not surprisingly that City of Echoes follows this path step by step. However, something must be said for the band's insistence on not repeating The Fire in our Throats will Beckon the Thaw; that takes some real guile.
Unfortunately, City of Echoes predicts its own unimportance by implying there's little substance to be found within its perimeter. What Pelican delivers here is roughly forty minutes of mindless, robotic instrumental jamming. I won't even bring the utterly horrific drumming up for full discussion, because I think we've all accepted that drummer Larry Herweg just has no idea what he's doing in the band. Generally speaking, we can liken him to a child who just stumbled into a brothel. Bewildered by the sight of abundant titties, he is truly overwhelmed with constant stimuli. Shamefully, this analogy doesn't quite fit with City of Echoes, as the crushing dynamics which marked the band's earlier works has flat lined on the new effort and we question if anyone is even alive in this band. If so, they're clearly aren't breathing, so maybe Zombi is a more apt name for the quartet. Artistically speaking, they've both showed similar disinterest in crafting valuable music.
Demolished by a grotesque lack of consistency, City of Echoes adamantly refuses to sound good. This is not inconsistency on a track by track basis, but moreso inconsistency from bar to bar, note to note. It's so awfully orchestrated that I daresay most high-schoolers jamming in their basement can conjure up better material. Perhaps this is stoner rock just gone horribly awry, as it is inevitably bound to do, but the first three tracks are sad excuses for music, even avoiding the "it's so bad it's good" label. Pelican riffs away for minutes upon minutes, and without the dynamic shifts of TFIOTWBTT or any sign of productive tonality changes or staunch drumming, there's very little to embrace. Riffs lead into more riffs, which lead into more riffs, which occasionally may inspire a tremolo, and some sort of breakdown is attempted (and failed) towards the latter half of the track. Emotion took the day off, inspiration is also suspiciously absent, and together this makes quite the losing combination.
The second half of City of Echoes does pick up slightly. "Winds with Hands" does well to let Herweg cry in the corner for a few minutes while he thinks about what he's done. This perhaps revitalizes the band, as what follows is an improvement over the first three tracks, though by no means cutting-edge. At this point we'll take what we can get. "Dead Between the Walls" is the closest the band gets to its previous album, and unsurprisingly, it carries itself the best out of the group. "Lost in the Headlights" is a return to garbage, which leads into the last two tracks. Honestly, this close to the end of the album I am just happy the torture will be over soon, but "Far from Fields" and "A Delicate Sense of Balance" actually show small, promising steps from Pelican. "Far from Fields" drops the (what is now extremely) annoying riffage and actually shows they've heard of chord progressions. With the decreased volume of noise coming from the guitars, Herwag is comfortable to drum at a normal loudness and for once doesn't sound like the raging doofus that he is on the previous six tracks. While a "Delicate Sense of Balance" sounds like it's doing its best to rip off Beware of Safety, the somber attitude is a welcome change from the agressive edge of the album. Again, we see the drumming and guitars coming into alignment and Pelican gels as a group of individuals playing music together. What a crazy fucking concept, I know.
At the end of the day, City of Echoes fails to make us care about its existence, and I find it troubling that anyone would really believe this was a good CD. Conveniently, this is now a great way to screen your friends; those who enjoy it have no real taste in music and are simply following popular fads. Those who grow their own brain will recognize the album for what it truly is, an outstanding failure. Disappointment only begins to describe it...
"This is TERRIBLE! Is this a joke? Are you kidding me?!"
-Lee Whitefield