Shining continue to wreak devastation on the conventions of musical genres.
Shining's Grindstone is not an easy album to describe. Having heard their previous effort, In The Kingdom of Kitsch You Will be a Monster (the album), this does not come as a surprise to me (although Grindstone is more explosive and weird than its predecessor). While I'm sure that there's 101 other bands that dabble in instrumental-progressive-neoclassical-metal-jazz-rock, none do it quite like Shining do. Rather than just taking influence from these styles and applying them to the rock format, Shining excel at shoveling a dense blend of all of these styles into the ear of the listener in a way that is original, exciting and occasionally overwhelming. Comparisons to other artists are too abstract and far-reaching to be helpful, so I won't even bother trying (I saw another review describe them them as The Mars Volta-Mahavishnu Orchestra-Slayer mix).
Grindstone starts off with "In The Kingdom of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster" (the song) - a sing minute orgy of everything that is awesome about music. A frantic jazz-rock riff is dissected, inflated, rearranged, deconstructed, reconstructed, and otherwise modified in just about every way imaginable way over the course of the songs 6 minutes. Just as you begin to wonder how long they can go with this for, all of the instruments begin to explode into one another as the song climaxes with a goosebump-inducing wall of sound.
I would like to be able to take the easy route and say that the rest of the album follows suit in a similar style to this song, but it doesn't. Songs two and three are a similar style of abrasive-jazz rock, but rather than sticking to a singular riff they display instead Shining's penchant for flirting with noisy structurelessness (although never falling fully off that cliff). After that the album kicks into its middle section (the two "To Be Proud of Crystal Colours is to Live Again" songs divide the album nicely into 3 sections) you also get a synthy neoclassical pieces, some ambience, and even the weirdest waltz I have ever heard. Cunning listeners/fans will even notice the self-indulgent reference to "REDRUM" from their previous album in the form of "The Red Room". My only complaint towards Grindstone is that these middle tracks feel more like raw ideas rather than complete songs; they are far from uninteresting, but they seem to end abruptly without having fully reached their potential.
Of course by the end of the album all of this is forgotten after the final 4 songs, which still haven't failed to leave me wondering what I just heard. First is "Psalm", whose triumphant, spine-chilling crescendo is somewhat comparable to Mogwai, although with an extra dose of weird. Next are two quieter songs - the synthy "-... .- -.-. ...." (Bach in Morse Code), and the deliciously sinister ambience of "1:4:9". Wrapping the whole album up is "Fight Dusk With Dawn", a song that slowly morphs and oozes from idea to idea, vaguely alluding to some sort of explosion that never happens before slowly letting your mind drift back to reality.
Grindstone's bombastic, weird, energetic, chaotic, and creative music has solidified Shining's rank as one of the top bands as far as boundary pushing music goes; a required listen for experimental music fans and an early contender for album of the year.
| Reviewer: Jeff Mcquiggan Added: February 27th 2007 |
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