Clouds - We Are Above You: A CD Review

The guys from Cave In are a busy bunch of dudes. Besides consistently dropping albums under that moniker the members (especially Stephen Brodsky) release record after record under side projects like Zozobra and Old Man Gloom. Well Clouds is yet another side-project, this one featuring Adam McGrath. Like last year's Legendary Demo, We Are Above You features a mixture of vintage metal, early '90s alternative metal, and some psychedelic outbursts. And, also like Legendary Demo, this new album both suffers and succeeds because of these traits. Sometimes the band hit on an interesting tone or create a new outlet for an old approach, but other times we are merely subjected to cheesy, off-the-wall attacks on musical areas better left unexplored.

"Empires in Basements" starts the album off with something that could have come off the last Cave In album. The guitars are thicker than the vault doors as Fort Know, while the bass is deep and powerful enough to rattle your ribcage. The song trots along in a familiar and poignant manner while the vocals are belted out in full-chested manly glory. This is rock music, hard rock music, and it works pretty well. Even the swirling, buzzing solo hits the air-guitar player inside of you when it starts about two minutes in.

"Feed the Horse" also brings the rock, this time via a galloping drum beat that seems snagged from an '80s punk act and a simple but decent guitar riff. Areas of the song branch out into more melodic territory than its predecessor, but the "turned to eleven" ruckus is still there.

It's "The Bad Seat" where the first serious misstep comes. A band that has just pummeled you with slabs of thick guitar and rock ferocity are now hitting you with a piano line and a theatrical vocal delivery? Yeah, it's true. The result is a song that sounds like a mix of World Inferno Friendship Society and some hand-clapping rock. It may not sound like the worst thing in the world, and it's not, it's just that this is not what this band should be doing.

"Heisenberg Says" picks up the rest of the '80s punk elements that "Feed the Horse" left behind and runs with them. But the homage to Suicidal Tendencies doesn't last long. After a ripping solo the band dip into a breakdown that could work in a ska song. No, I am not kidding. It's a weird reprieve, but at least we are back into the rock territory and the Motorhead-inspired "Motion of the Ocean" keeps this going. Here the band are all fast drums and chunky riffs again. If Big Business added a guitar player we'd probably get songs, and solos, like this.

"Slow Day" unfortunately kills the mood yet again. This time it's a wandering psychedelic number that seems to tap into everything from Rush to Deep Purple. The vocals are suddenly operatic in an Iron Maiden sense and the shining acoustic notes scream of '70s rock dinosaurs. Maybe the song isn't poorly executed, but the decision to create it was a poor one.

Luckily the follow up is the most brutal song on the album. "Horrification" is pure hardcore screed. The vocals are scream the guitars are blazing and the anger is evident. Sure, it might merely be a shot at a specific genre as much as "Slow Day" was, but damn does it sound a lot better. Following that up with the hard-rocker turned soaring freak-out that is "Glass House Rocks" is also another smart move. Sure, it's not hitting as hard "Horrification," but it's here that we finally get a blending of sounds done with a little aplomb.

The album ends with the slow burning heavy-ballad "Playing Dark" and the tremolo-tinged Danzig tribute "Garbage In, Garbage Out."

Okay, I get it. Side projects provide an opportunity for musicians to step outside of their normal boundaries, their normal instruments, and I guess even their normal attention to detail, but Clouds sound more like a band done for fun than a group that should be signed by a record label and putting out albums. The mix here is too scattered and often ironic to the point that it's just not entertaining. If the band had chose to explore just one of the areas of this album we might have had a better product, but instead they got greedy and in the process left ill-formed ideas and leftover space behind them.