At some point artists started releasing ‘singles’ again. I mean, we know no one ever really stopped, but we’ve been used to what used to be called ‘album oriented programming/AOP’ or ‘album oriented rock/AOR’ for ourselves since, like, the seventies man. Yeah, we’re that fucking old.
Recently though artists and groups have been sending us ‘singles’ to review and we’re a little out of sorts. I was thinking about it and I was gonna send it back and ask for at least an ep but then I was like, no wait, this is really easy. I can write like two lines and still be technically getting back to the group — right? We cool guys?
Anyway. We’ve heard of Ampevene and know they’re a local Albany band but never really heard them. So we were glad to receive this request to review this single — albeit years ago — but as we keep saying we’re going through our backlog now or whatever. And EVERYTHING WE ARE REVIEWING ARE TIMELESS CLASSICS SO STFU!
Ampevene may be Albany based but they’re clearly a group that sounds like they’ve got ambitions, chops, and productions for more of a nationwide audience. I’m sure they get this all the time but they sound a lot like that band that Omar Rodriguez Lopez formed after At-The Drive In… what was their name? Oh yeah, the ‘Mars Volta’. They took what ATDI was doing and took it… frankly a little too far into the prog stratosphere for me. As does Ampevene (not saying we don’t like it or think it’s good just not necessarily our cup o tea — we’s more post-hardcore than post-hardcore-went-prog). They list influences like Lopez, Miles Davis, King Crimson, TOOL… you get the idea.
They’re clearly quite talented. They’re also in what’s probably now an outmoded style, though I think I remember even Sleater Kinney was getting into it back in the early aughts… I don’t know whether to call it post-prog, but that’s pretty much what I hear. If not that then retro-prog, neo fusion, post classic rock, etc. Made by musicians that have clearly honed their chops and studied their precedents.
It’s pretty entertaining. Pretty wild, out there, psychedelic. And I’m guessing it’s a lot of fun to watch live, “keeping spectators on their heels from their improvisational clash of metal and jazz.” as NYS Music put it.
To me, this single could be from a Led Zeppelin record or a Polvo record. It clearly blends genres. Even though it can clearly be placed within the sphere of a few genres, it’s not predictable in anyway. It turns on right away. No intros, no lengthy instrumental passages, no letup. It continues in this vein for the entirety of five and a half minutes. Many of the lines are sung-spoken but then there are a number of melodic passages that come one time and are repeated a couple or a few times but then aren’t repeated again; as a music critic I can’t overemphasize how interesting this is. It really doesn’t happen a lot. It’s interesting and atypical.
However, so’s not to give Ampevene too swelled a head (though they may deserve one that’s really not what we do here at the Boredom), there are a few passages that do predictably slip into classic rock riffing or lean too heavily on the Mars Volta/Radiohead type overreliance on the bleep bloop of heavily laden effects.
But overall a very worthy and interesting single. We hope it was a hit (we don’t really listen to the radio). Good luck fellas. Give us free tickets to your next show and we’ll be there!
Times Boredom 