Daveportivo's Cultural Evaluation Facility

This will need some prefacing. Me and my good buddy and fellow Reviewer Gareth Rhys-Thomas (Metal, Punk and Rave (old Rave) specialist) are recommending each other ten records that we wouldn’t normally listen to or wouldn’t have heard in full. We both have pretty eclectic tastes and there are some bands we both like already in each others lists. It’ll be interesting to see how we each review the records with our alternate musical bases. I have to apologise in advance as my knowledge of hard rock, metal and punk is not encyclopaedic and I will not know obvious references and links, but will try to judge of the music’s individual merits, so I will unlikely be able to tell if something is generic or a rip off of something else, or completely original in its genre for example. Anyway on with the show, album one of ten.
.
Quick Sand - The Slip
.
The album opens well enough with opener Fazer starting with a somewhat basic generic chugging riff. The guitar work doesn’t really go anywhere unexpected or interesting to begin with. The vocals provide more intrigue with singer letting his lines run slightly over long and almost sharply trailing of at the end. The guitar break down and solo bring some much need creativity to the piece with one of my favourite effects, with the guitarist suddenly sounding like he’s playing at the bottom of the well. The track ends strongly and is pleasant if an unspectacular opener.
.
Head to the Wall doesn’t particularly stand out as a track sounding more like a paint by numbers effort for the American Alt. Rock genre. The drumming is very well arranged, while the guitar often feels uninspired, the drumming is strong a prominent and adds a lot of punch to vocals. A very listenable opening salvo from the album but for Slip to break above mediocrity it needs some tracks to stand up and grab you by the balls.
.
Dine Alone accomplishes that goal, with its punchy couplets and well written lyrics, “You Look Like You have No Friends, Can’t Keep Up With The New Trends”. The depressing social pariah bordering on sociopathic lyrics are nicely complemented with little guitar spikes which create a sctizafenic illusion. The track contains a more interesting and emotive guitar arrangement, that sounds very much of its time and could slot onto the soundtrack of a million nineties high school slacker movies.
.
What becomes immediately apparently listening to Slip is that Quicksand have a real penchant for a slightly euphoric guitar sound to be laid over their choruses, of course its buried under distortion and fuzz. But if you were to clean up the guitar remove the fuzz and sludge you’d be left with something very reminiscent of U2, Snow Patrol or even Angels and Airwaves. The title track uses this effect most prevalently and is lost in its own blandness.
.
Freezing Princess is lost with a basic template and basic guitar structure that lingers too long and is too repetitive and could really do with another motion or transition to it. However if you like to go limp and sway this track is for you. Lie and Wait picks up the tempo as the guitars spiral, swirl and then charge it’s far for interesting and doesn’t sound like U2 if they were American and had no friends, wait I’ve gotta stop describing Angels and Airwaves.
.
Unfulfilled continues the albums second wind as the bands signature bass lines which by track seven are well worn out are broken by cool guitar riffs right when you want them to be creating those hair swinging, head banging moments all rock bands need. The track just grows and grows getting more intriguing as it goes along and stopping a just the right moment before it could begin to overstay its welcome.
.
One nice feature of this album is that the tracks don’t overstay there welcome which can be a real problem with this genre of music as the tracks can become a dirge but Quicksand end their tracks promptly and creatively and oft have you thinking you wish it could have lasted a little longer and developed to the next level. It’s a tricky line to tread, and leaving the listener wanting more is always better than leaving him asking when will the bloody track end.
.
A real issue with this album is that while the tracks blend together very well and the listen is very smooth the individual tracks don’t really stand out a grab your attention. There aren’t great vocal hooks in abundance, nor brilliant guitar lines you’ll be humming all day. The most immediate tracks on this album are its most concise; Lie and Wait and Omission grab the listener as they do more in their two and a half minutes vocally and instrumentally than the more meandering and blander tracks. Baphomet is the worst example of the latter; it seems like a parody of American music of this era, it’s a slow dirge and while it has some nice movements on guitar it feel completely superfluous. The kind of track a million bands put on a million albums that no one remembers and are so interchangeable and uninteresting they kill an album’s momentum dead.
.
Too Official is a typical slice of American Alt. Rock, I can already picture a million kids sitting their rooms dressed in plaid, bong or splith in hand complaining about the machine, the corporations and how their work is grinding away their identity. That said it’s nicely written and the chorus and vocals are shout along fun with the drums pounding and guitars swirling and chugging along in the background. So much silly fun it honestly makes you sick.
.
Overall Thoughts: This is certainly a consistent and strong album. It does however feel dated, you know your listening to early 90s American Alt. Rock the minute the first track kicks in. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, this album certainly feels like a defining album, but not a transcendent one. This isn’t my area of expertise but if I’d had to guess I’d say that this album and band wasn’t the mega popular scene leader of its time, more the connosoirs favourite.
.
The album flows together nicely, and while the individual tracks tend not to overstay their welcome Baphomet and Transparent could easily have been culled from the album, to make it more concise and perhaps to give a track Freezing Princess that extra thirty seconds of guitar inventiveness to help raise it above mediocrity. The best tracks are most shortest and most immediate they come flying out of the repetitive, head nodding, disillusioned 90s rock like bullets. (***)
.
Tracks To Download: Lie & Wait, Unfulfilled, Omission, Dine Alone, Too Official.

Gareth's Proffesional Oppinion: Quicksand are considered one of the first ‘Post Hardcore’ bands that emerged as a more thoughtful approach to the hardcore punk movement that emerged during the 1980s; including a more refined guitar style and vocals.

Fugazi meets Helmet; Slip is still regarded as the bands benchmark release. Full of angst, Slip is nonetheless a mature album that lurches from the urgent with tunes such as the title track, to the slower and more thoughtful Freezing Process, to more of an outright metal song in Lie and Wait. The hooks are all tight, whilst the actual guitar work contains minimal fuss to create a sound that’s dynamic and fresh, the drumming full of neat timing changes and fills. Simply put, aside from Walter Schreifels vocals which are at best an acquired taste, Slip is an under-rated, important album in the development of modern alternative music. There’s better out there, but not an awful lot.
.
Release Date: 1993
Rating: 8/10

To See Gareth's Half of the Article check out his blog: http://farbeyondthehorizon.blogspot.com/