Destroyer Destroyer

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘music’ as “the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity b: vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony.”

Under this description, it is with great certainty, and a great big goddamn headache, that I can say Destroyer Destroyer’s Littered with Arrows is not ‘music’ as the dictionary has defined it. The key words in that definition are unity and continuity, two elements common of ‘music’ that could not be found anywhere on this half-hour shriek fest.

Like one randomly strewn together collection of low-end guitar tones and painfully shrill vocals, this album couldn’t be farther from continuity. Yes, one could take the fact that the entire album sounds like a single song as continuity, but continuity implies that something follows a clear and efficient course, what this album exercises is connectivity. And last time I checked, this review was about a terrible album, not Legos.

And it really seems that DD went with the tried-and-true Lego building methodology of the more pieces you pile on and the bigger you make things, the better the end result will be. It may not be an Apache helicopter as the box originally showed, but it will be a flying vehicle that launches 47 different types of lasers, and really, who doesn’t like lasers? But now that I’m successfully a few miles from the point, and I myself am losing review continuity, I’d say it’s about time to clearly detail why this record fails.

And that’s as simple as them writing checks that their instruments can’t cash. Is it impressive that the band can play as fast as they can with such complex and constantly shifting song structures? Yes. Yes it is, but unless I missed the part where that made for a good song, somebody will have to explain to me why “Daddy Long Legs” is comprised of nothing more than blazing chord progressions to slow, pounding bass drumming and back again with a shriek or two thrown in wherever it was the band thought it would fit. The song clocks in at no longer than a minute and a half, but in that duration it seems that three years of your life were zapped away; you’re stuck in a musical limbo where 45 seconds through the song sounds identical to 8 seconds through the song and 1:12 through the song.

If you add to this the fact that the preceding paragraph could just as easily apply to the next song, the song after that, and so on, you’ll understand exactly where I’m coming from.

Because all I know after this record is that, where I’m coming from, and where this band is headed, are two destinations that could not be further apart.