Basement Apes

Gluecifer

SPV/Steamhammer, 2002

http://www.gluecifer.net

REVIEW BY: Chris Harlow

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 03/21/2003

I remember the time around March of 2002 when I suffered a minor anxiety attack. That was the first time I had heard that the hard-rock heroes from Norway, Gluecifer, were releasing their fifth studio album, Basement Apes, on Sony Records in Scandinavia (SPV/Steamhammer rest of Europe) with a far greater pocketbook than the band's independent labels of the past. I also recall that anxiety attack ratcheting up a bit when I heard news that Martin Hederos of pop-rockin' Soundtrack of Our Lives fame and the quirky Cato Salsa would be guest artists on the release performing piano and organ duties. Ack!! Any true Gluecifer fan would have done a similar double-take as piano's and organ's mix with the trademark Gluecifer rock sounds like the proverbial oil-and-water concoction.

For the uninitiated listener, Gluecifer have always sat on the "rock throne" on past releases; this proclamation was cleverly documented in a song of the same name on their second album, my_heart_sings_the_harmony_web_ad_alt_250 Ridin' The Tiger. So maybe, just maybe, all I needed was just a valium. Surely this album would not be a letdown.

So, were my fears founded or not? Well, of the first few tracks on the disc, "Reversed" and "Brutus" play like any of the tracks on the previous album, Tender Is The Savage. Upbeat songs with vocalist Biff Malibu on the verge of hitting his traditional fever pitch in parts of the songs, conspicuously looping bass lines brought to us by Stu Manx, and a dual guitar frenzy on the second song by lead guitarists Captain Poon and Raldo Useless. Excellent!

And then the bottom begins to fall out. In hearing "Losing End" for the first time, I picture Biff having pulled up a stool in the recording studio as he orchestrates the vocals on this song in a first gear type of sing-a-long. If one wants to discount this thought as being petty since musicians are often moved to try and do new things, keep my analogy in mind when you hear "Little Man" deeper into the album.

As I heard the band's first released single and fourth track "Easy Living" for the first time, I could not get over the fact that Biff tells us that he's done with the easy living 28 times, by my count, in a song that clocks in at just three minutes. I find this just plain strange, as Biff has typically told his audience so much more in ways far more clever than this repetitive monologue. By contrast, instrumentally this song hits on all cylinders as described in the previous commentary.

After this, the album truly breaks down into a bunch of slickly recorded tracks that appear to aim at capturing a new breed of fans. These are songs that a new listener of the band might not shy away from, but that lack the attitude and emotion of everything the band has put into past recordings. In the end, Basement Apes is truly a mixed bag of songs -- a few throwback rockers, a few songs that are truly pop fluff, and a few tracks that putter along at speeds barely more daring than an acoustic number.

So, whereas Gluecifer may have sung about 455-horsepower engines on full bed frames in the past ("Under My Hood"), Basement Apes ends up sounding like little more than a sputtering four-cylinder on the highway.

Rating: C

User Rating: Not Yet Rated


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© 2003 Chris Harlow and The Daily Vault. All rights reserved. Review or any portion may not be reproduced without written permission. Cover art is the intellectual property of SPV/Steamhammer, and is used for informational purposes only.