ZapTown

Extra Life
Made Flesh
LOAF
Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Links:
Extra Life: http://www.extralifeblood.com
LOAF: http://l-o-a-f.com/

I’m a fan of flow. Don’t get me wrong, I love challenging music. I’ve spent half of my life seeking out the avant garde and the strange. But even within the context of the bizarre, it still has to flow be it from song to song or within the song itself.

Extra Life’s opening track “Voluptuous Life” is anything but flow. The lyrical content is just words stacked on words trying to build a scenario of paranoia and anxiety, as much of the album makes you feel.

Listening to Made Flesh, you can visualize the band’s record collection: Frank Zappa, Yes, The Paper Chase, Deastro, Xiu Xiu, etc.

I love the science fiction aspect to this album, but it’s really hard to like it because of the varied levels these songs are on. Take “The Ladder,” for example. If this was an instrumental, it would be mind blowing. The song is equally eerie and beautiful, despite its underground textures. But the vocals are doing something else. I almost want to point fingers at him and accuse him for singing lyrics to another song, but the occasional re-connecting with the musical thought patterns disputes that theory.

There are subtle elements within each song, I really like and can pick out specifics, but the context of the entire song constantly gets in the way (as it should), and either the band should have expanded on these interesting elements or brought the concept of the song down to the level of these elements.

Either way, there is very little that makes me want to return, the songs keep me in a state of limbo, and that’s a shame because Made Flesh could have been made so much better.