The experiment in writing outside of my comfort zone continues! The Dreaded Press have just published my review of the first half of Djevara‘s third album The Rising Tide, which is entitled Corsa Al Ribasso.

The idea of releasing one album in two parts is quite an interesting one.  The Rising Tide seems not to be so much a double album in the style of Guns And Roses’ Use Your Illusion as it does a pair of EPs released around the same time.  The epic press release I received along with the CD (which tried to make the band out to be a cross between Fugazi and At The Drive In fronted by Jesus and Mother Theresa) suggested that this part of the album is more challenging than the second but did not specify a release date for the second part.  So I wonder whether this, admittedly less commercial, half is not an attempt at testing the waters… seeing whether the band’s audience will follow them.

Business model geekery aside, to say that I hated Corsa Al Ribasso would be something of an understatement.  Back when I used to go to tiny out-of-the-way music festivals in the backwoods of the Swiss countryside I saw and heard my fair share of genuinely shocking acts : Goth bands who had to “rewind the backing tape” in order to do an encore, angry fourteen year-olds doing RATM, decent techno acts who hired a leather trouser-clad wanker to bellow out their samples… the list goes on and on but Djevara’s album is right up there as far as memorable failures go.  It is relentlessly hopeless.