Instead, I'm listening to Earth, Sweet Cobra's first album in five years. I listened to it for the first time last night walking to and from the bar. The cold beer didn't help.
It makes sense that a band that definitely changed between their first albums would change again after a five-year hiatus. It would be ridiculous to expect Mercy 2.0. What you might expect, though, is a consistency in quality. Forever and Mercy don't have the same sound (I know I'm ignoring Praise, but I don't really remember what that album sounds like at the moment), but they were certainly of a similar quality. Earth, on the other hand, is sadly a step down for Sweet Cobra.
Sweet Cobra's goal on Earth is pretty clear: let's be a more dynamic band by expanding the sound by incorporating more melody, add some poppy, bouncy riffs, and eschew the old vocals for something more accessible. You know, like Torche and Kylesa and Baroness and Helms Alee. (Mastodon belongs, too, especially since they're Baroness' apparent influences for every decision good or bad they've ever made, but Remission came out so long ago, that it's not even worth talking about it like it's from the same band. I like Mastodon's newer stuff, though.)
The issue, though, is that Baroness is fuckin' terrible now, Kylesa's Ultraviolet was so bad that I doubt I'll listen to the new one, and Helms Alee's Sleepwalking Sailors isn't nearly as good as most people think. Baroness replaced intricate heaviness with up-its-own-ass prog navel-gazing, Kylesa acid tripped their way into the most boring psychedelic rock I've ever heard, and Helms Alee's latest offering was a relatively forgettable blur of good job good effort. (Torche, and specifically Steve Brooks, doesn't know how to release a bad record, so they're the exception here.)
Sweet Cobra must've paid attention while they were away, because that's pretty much the blueprint for Earth. Heavy bands writing less heavy music isn't inherently fascinating. I know that's not groundbreaking, but it feels like any time a heavy band lightens up they think they're breaking new ground and not treading dirty dishwater. All of those bands sacrificed urgency and aggression, and it's maybe Sweet Cobra's greatest sin on Earth. It doesn't have any drive, and it's driving me away from it.
It's not that Earth is even necessarily a bad album, though it has really bad songs on it (lookin' at you, "Repo" and "Stiff Fits" and other faceless songs from the middle of the album), it's the ways in which it isn't a great or even good album. It'd be one thing if Sweet Cobra's sonic experimentation was unique, but it's just a reproduction of the ways Torche and Baroness and Kylesa tried to reinvent themselves. It all seems stale. Is it really experimenting if you're just following directions? Well, yes, obviously, says every scientist ever in unison, but it's certainly not the risk it once was. Hell, it might've been riskier to stay heavy.
Fortunately, there's still some old Sweet Cobra on Earth, not-so-coincidentally on songs titled "Future Ghosts" and "Old Haunts." The spectrality of the song titles mimics the brief glimpses into the dead and gone Sweet Cobra of old. That band's still creepin' around, willing to rear its ghastly head under cloak of darkness, but we know it's time to say Rest In Pieces to the band that wrote "Brux" and "Mercy" and "Crusader" and "Fucking Fertilizer" and "Chopping Block." We have to give up that ghost. Maybe if we do, we'll be able to come back to Earth and really appreciate it.
I mean, I already like it more this second time than I did the first time. Maybe I'll look back on this post in a couple weeks and laugh at myself for being so myopic. I mind being wrong about a lot of stuff, but I'd rather initially find a good album to be bad than the reverse, which I'm guilty of way more often than I'd care to admit. Fingers crossed I'm wrong here.
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