Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Iwrestledabearonce
Label: Century Media
Release: 2009
Running time: 42.33
Rating: 3.5/5
Iwrestledabearonce is a young band whose name alone hints that they’re different from the rest of the pack. We’ve reached a point where it’s really not hard to see that we’re surrounded by a sea, an ocean, of going-nowhere bands peddling recycled rock with precious little original insight. Some of them genuinely make us angry, since they’ve sunk deep into the MTV-style commercial music scene and would rather pull a pile of cash out of their pockets, and their shelf life is strictly limited, usually to the success of the first album. But what can you do when these bands “artificially” pop up on the scene like mushrooms after rain? Creatively, they often have little to offer, or are flat-out undeserving.
Iwrestledabearonce took a perfectly logical shortcut to secure that distinctive quality setting them apart from other bands. They decided to develop a sort of adventitious blend of many genres, ones that at first listen are basically incompatible. The foundation of it all is, of course, grindcore. Hello? Yes. At its core we can just say: “Yes!” For the most part, through all the mixing of different musical influences, what sticks in the ears is grind! So Iwrestledonce could be progressive core, if not even art (metal electro) core. B? Let’s leave this dissecting for better times! And there’s one more shocking thing. All the vocals captured on the album come from the female body of singer Krysta Cameron. How much help from studio sound effects she gets with the extreme singing is, of course, another story.
And finally! What on earth road have they taken? Basically, they keep gluing different genres together, piece by piece. Besides the mentioned grindcore element, which admittedly leads on the album, they add progressive and even groove rock elements, commanded by the clean melodic vocals of Krysta Cameron (Cat’s Pijamas). In those melodic, clean parts, her approach recalls that of our own Mojca from Slovenia’s Obduction. Right there, the tracks Cat’s Pijamas and, after it, Pazuzu For The Win bring to the album the least fragmentation, or the biggest dose of compatibility between the seemingly incompatible, so they also make up the most listenable stretch of the album. But that’s very subjective in Iwrestledabearonce’s case. Because of the aforementioned layering.
Progressive metal elements cross with grind, and the band (with lots of help from excellent production) also ensures an extremely dynamic flow with a rhythm line that can’t sit still, stringing together so many breaks in the basic rhythms and tempos. While listening, you won’t be surprised when the element of surprise (unpredictability) carries you even to moments of country twanging on dobro and banjo, plus some horse whinnying. Iwrestledabearonce are nowhere near giving the feeling of playing by force and flexing muscles. Proof of that, among other things, is the excellent electronic, atmospheric turn the record takes in Black-Eyed Bush (“black-eyed thicket”), which sounds like the darkest and most mysterious thing on the album. It’s built from electronic sound samples over a lively rhythmic undercarriage. Female vocals add extra variety and lift the mood, but only as an occasional spice for creating a backdrop. The start (You Ain’t No Family) and the end of the album (See You Shell) are designed along the lines of extreme metal, with brutal elements (extreme vocals) outweighing melodic ones (melodic, clean vocals). I should also mention that the band seasons the whole album with drifting between different flavors of heavy metal. From traditional impulses to ones that could just as well be used in death metal and, the next moment, black metal.
This is an album that at first stirs up negative feelings, since it can seem like this: “Aha, yet another band that doesn’t know what it wants, so it plays everything and tries to gain recognizability in the cheapest way possible!” But when you give yourself over to the record, you find it offers a whole realm of musical moments that keep surprising and thrilling you. Atmospherically they’re very strong, and beneath the otherwise fragmented music lies a deep coherence and clear direction, proving that Iwrestledabearonce aren’t just more time-and-space wasters in the “honest” world of rock.
So to all of you, and yes, you’re in the minority, who know the names of experimental rock only too well, like Mr. Bungle, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and let me add Rijeka’s Hesus Attor, etc… and generally everyone who likes listening to “twisted metal” from Napalm Death to Mastodon, and everyone who’s “just” spinning electric-period Miles Davis from the seventies or Pet Shop Boys and New Order from the eighties in the “CD case” and finds plenty of good music that fulfills you among all these genre chasms (so you’re endlessly open-minded music gourmets), give this new, young, utterly wacky yet brave band a try! You may well not regret it. It’ll be interesting to follow Iwrestledabearonce’s development going forward. “It’s All Happening” gives them a great platform for musical maturing and for building their own artistry in the future!
Lineup
Krysta Cameron – vocals
Steven Bradley – guitar, programming
John Ganey – guitar, programming
Dave Branch – bass guitar
Mike Montgomery – drums
Production
Ryan Boesch
Track list
1. You Ain’t No Family (3:46)
2. White Water In The Morning (3:51)
3. Danger In The Manger (2:19)
4. I’m Cold and There Are Wolves After Me(2:59)
5. Tastes Like Kevin Bacon (3:19)
6. The Cat’s Pajamas (3:22)
7. Pazuzu For the Win (4:00)
8. Black-Eyed Bush (2:28)
9. Eli Cash Vs. The Godless Savages(3:55)
10. See You In Shell (3:22)
11. White Water In The Morning – remix*
12. Pazuzu For the Win – remix*
*…bonus tracks
