That's just kind of how basketball works. Of course, fantasy basketball leagues don't care about advanced metrics, but BPM, being box-score-based, does have some relationship to regular counting statistics (which fantasy basketball leagues do use). What's all of this mean? It means that I've clumsily drawn analogy between NBA rookie performance, the risk involved in retaining rookies in fantasy keeper and dynasty leagues, and how to evaluate a rookie band's impact. The analogy gets even clumsier when you realize that often a band's original material is both subjectively and objectively viewed as their best, putting them in an inverse relationship with NBA players. Boy, I've really made a mess of this. Let's see how much more nonsensical I can make this.
We also have to define more clearly what we consider a "rookie band." If we use the amateur/professional split of most professional sports, then I think it's fair to consider demos as time spent in the amateur leagues and a band's first proper release as their elevation to professional status. This gets muddled when you start parsing out self-released material and label-released material, but I think this construction has merit. You don't call a band's demo release their "debut album" (or maybe you do, but that's because you're a weirdo). Some bands don't release demos, but preps-to-pros is dead, so shut up.
Keeper's MMXIV has all of the trappings of a demo: it's called the year it was released, the CD/cassette copies are very cheap, and the band describes this recording as "2014 demos." It's also a (somewhat) different record, featuring shorter songs (they're still between eight and ten minutes long) and a sound that isn't as sprawling, though just as heavy. It is a ridiculously good demo, the kind of demo that gets you a top five pick in the draft for sure.
So, you're in a keeper league and looking for that rookie to lock up for the future. You think maybe you should snag Crimewave, but you're worried that they're not gonna release anything else after this year. You look at Viet Cong, but the name-change debacle has you a little worried in their future consistency. Lockin Out's roster is full of rookies with big numbers, but they, too, have had trouble producing beyond their first years. The safest pick, the pick you were going to make all along but just needed a little support for your gut, was Keeper.
Look at what Keeper has produced in 2015: debut LP The Space Between Teeth on Crown & Thrones LTD, a cassette split with Old Witch for GrimCVLT, and a split 12" with Sea Bastard that got released by like six different labels.
Total songs? 5
Total time of songs? 72 goddamn minutes, an average of 14.4 minutes per song
The aesthetics? The Space Between Teeth on clear gold vinyl limited to 150, the split with Old Witch as a Grimoire/CVLT Nations collab with a gold-embossed box for the cassette (featuring misprint of "Keeper" on both sides of the tape!), and the Sea Bastard split on a limited run of black vinyl (sold out in the US and UK, only 30 remaining from Canada).
So on paper (or wax or plastic), Keeper looks good. But do they pass the ear test?
As I said before, Keeper's MMXIV featured shorter (but still lengthy) songs that were all doom punishment. It's clear the band is establishing themselves as as purveyors of the almighty riff. Some people might even prefer the songs on the demo!
For their rookie season, though, Keeper dives into the abyss and really stretches out, taking up as much negative space as possible. This is the apocalypse in slow-motion, a millisecond by millisecond breakdown of the end-times, thoroughly detailed and agonizingly embraced. Keeper write music that wants to inhabit every atomic nano-inch of space of life's sorrowful and painful moments. They fill up little sliver of space - the space between your teeth - with worlds of aural devastation and monolithic doom.
There's also a profound beauty to Keeper's music, an affirmation of life's pleasurableness and immensity in the confirmation of its bleakest realities. There's a poetic delight in the hopeless abandonment of "The King" and "Four Walls; A Home," not necessarily a cynical embrace of sadness, but rather an honest enjoyment of self-actualizing tragedy. The only thing sadistic is the volume. It's misanthropy with heart.
Jacob Lee's vocals remind of Burning Witch and Thou, scathing and eviscerating and expressive. Their rawness imbues the pummeling, unforgiving, and relentless riffage with personality. It all lends itself to the image of crawling on all fours, puking up damnation, while feeling the earth under palm and knee, sometimes plush and sometimes shards.
It's opioid euphoria tied inextricably to the visceral come down. It's bright and bleak and gold and black and clouds and razorwire and breathing and suffocating and sprawling and fetal and crawling and falling.
Keeper, the sonic representation of the cataclysmic drought in their home state of California, are worth the investment - both temporally and monetarily. This might've been a season for the ages. Everything else that comes next is icing. You hope, of course, that such prolific output this early in a band's career doesn't foreclose their bright future. You hope, instead, that Lee and Keats are the next coming of Thou, able to churn out brilliant music at an alarming rate. In that case, Keeper might become a dynasty.
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