TRACKLISTING
1. 21st Century Monotony Disco
2. New Wave Coke
3. The Fresh
4. The Duel
5. Ahead Of My Time
6. Down In The Dumps (Like Nobody Else)
7. So You Judge Me From The Volume Of My Band?
8. Tango De La Muerte
9. Like A Matador pt 1
10. The Luscious Cabaret
11. Mere A Cipher
12. Ode To L&G
13. Ditched On A Pile
14. Flame The Whisper
15. SOD's Law
16. Just Like Lucy Said
review by Jesse A Lambertson exclusively for BRUTALISM.com
Matadors (not The Matadors from Canada) are a Swedish group that has a glam image on their sites and claims to be a part-Tango group. I have no idea what that is in the context of Matadors’ work, but the CD Flame the Whisper is certainly not standard fare on BRUTALISM.com. It is not metal, it is not Dark Noise/Ambient, and it is not Grindcore (we could go on and on with the genres the CD is not). The CD is more like a newer groovier re-writing of Social Distortion or Bad Religion. Especially tracks like “The Fresh” and “Ahead of my Time.” Then there are even moments on the CD, through “Ode to L&G” that remind me of the Native American (I understand the CD is not made by an American band) chants and rhythms in Tomahawk’s newest release Anonymous. And what is Tomahawk but a Mike Patton vehicle for musical creation-and-simultaneous-destruction of musical habits and genre categories. This is a great thing.
As the CD spins, the thing that strikes me the most is that these genres in the CD and the genres not in the CD (as mentioned above) seemingly declare that the band’s work must be accepted for what it is, quality song writing steeped in the verse chorus verse structure of popular music and that all the myspace (little “m” on purpose) genres that bands can choose from in their labeling of themselves are value-less. The problem is then that bands buy into this stuff (I understand marketing). Matadors’ sound is better than these genre categorizations. I prefer noisier music personally most of the time, but the CD presents a gathering of solid musical ingredients that are not quite label-able (now a word).
Matadors
matadormusic@hotmail.com
http://www.matadorsmusic.com
Devil Doll Records
john@devildollrecords.com
http://www.devildollrecords.com