Superjoint - Caught Up In The Gears Of Application (Album Review)
Monday, 14 November 2016
Written by Alec Chillingworth
Photo: Jody Dorignac
Sometimes, it’s nice to enjoy the quiet. Soak up the serenity. We all love a juicy rock star beef/scandal/Twitter spat, but it’s also good when they know when to, y’know, shut up. ‘Caught Up In The Gears Of Application’, the third album by the band formerly known as Superjoint Ritual, is one of those instances when you long to separate art from artist, but it’s a bit tricky to do that.
Vocalist Phil Anselmo has stated that the album circles the effects of modern technology, while simultaneously saying it means, “many things, or no things”. So, whichever way you look at it, the social media-bashing present on Sociopathic Herd Delusion and Clickbait seems a little off seeing as he’s brought much of that on himself over the past year or so.
Lyrical discomfort aside, ‘Caught Up In The Gears Of Application’ tokes on the shrivelled, still-burning joint the band left on the floor with 2003’s ‘A Lethal Dose Of American Hatred’. This is bluesy, southern-tinged hardcore flecked with shards of metal and drowned in a murky production job that would stifle most bands through its lack of instantaneity.
Burning The Blanket, for example, is your traditional Superjoint affair. It’s frantic, scratchy, nasty shit. Anselmo hits that higher, nigh on black metal squeal before a sludgy riff slithers from what may well have been Cthulhu’s arse crack.
But, while the pace does pick up occasionally, ‘Caught Up In The Gears Of Application’ is less musically murderous than its predecessors. Yet it still delivers. The Jimmy Bower/Kevin Bond guitar partnership is a winner, with Ruin You’s riffs stinking of blues and Clickbait harking back to those discordant black metal leitmotifs in its second half. Today And Tomorrow’s spoken word, meanwhile, arrives ensconced in feedback, repeated riffing and bludgeoning breakdowns, hewing closer to what Anselmo was doing with the Illegals a few years back. Their drummer, Jose Gonzalez, fittingly now plays for Superjoint.
In truth, Superjoint’s latest doesn’t offer much you couldn’t get from Anselmo’s other projects. Sludgy blues? The first three Down records. Sothern-fried riffs? Pantera. Black metal? Scour. ‘Caught Up In The Gears Of Application’ is a fine record to bang your head to, but if you’re after something more potent, maybe binge on the band’s previous output first.
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