When listening to a new album, I often judge my opinion by what I call the “surf test.” Basically, the longer an album can hold my attention and keep me from surfing the Internet, the more I like it.
Before listening to Chevelle’s new album, Sci-Fi Crimes, I was afraid my mouse hand would be on the move quickly, and I’d learn more about baseball box scores and Facebook updates than music. However, the album is surprisingly good and managed to keep my interest through most of its 45-minute running time.
Those who are familiar with Chevelle’s older albums will find plenty of familiar ground on Sci-Fi Crimes. In tracks like “Jars,” the band mines much of the same moody yet radio-friendly territory as their earlier work (particularly “Send The Pain Below” from Wonder What’s Next) making it a natural choice for the first single off the album.
The track “Mexican Sun” revisits perhaps the most time-honored tradition of Chevelle songwriting, the 6/8 meter, used most notably in previous hits “The Red” and “Vitamin R (Leading Us Along).” This type of track has always played to the band’s strengths, and they seem to know it, including at least one or two of these brooding, emotional waltzes on every major release.
One cannot speak about Chevelle without touching on the seemingly endless comparisons of frontman Pete Loeffler’s voice to Maynard James Keenan, lead singer of Tool. The criticism is not totally unfounded (their voices are remarkably similar), and the band admits that Tool is one of their biggest influences.
But the track “Shameful Metaphors,” while also very Keenan-esque, seems to suggest that the band may mean to align itself with Maynard’s other, more melodic gig, A Perfect Circle. Influences aside, however, the track is an album highlight, and also a modern rock rarity: a fairly hard-rocking song played almost entirely in a major key.
There are moments on the album tailor-made for guitar shredders. The track “Fell Into Your Shoes” features a unison guitar and bass riff that is as close as the band has ever come to prog-rock. If nothing else, it should make a fantastic Guitar Hero track.
As is often the case, the track that stands out most is the one that sounds least like everything else on the album. The acoustic “Highland’s Apparition” is far and away the biggest breath of fresh air on Sci-Fi Crimes. The ballad allows the band to show that their songwriting ability can sometimes stand up on its own; volume and bombast is not always necessary to convey emotional intensity.
The song ends abruptly; however, and its memory is blasted to pieces by the record’s heaviest tune, “Roswell’s Spell.” The second half of the song can’t maintain the punch of the first, and it’s right about then I made the first move toward my computer mouse and pointed my web browser to ESPN.
The final handful of tracks are largely forgettable, middle-of-the-road rockers, and by that time I was far more engrossed in reading Twitter updates than sussing out the finer details of late-track album filler.
So, all-in-all, Chevelle passed my “surf test” with pretty high marks. I made it seven tracks in before I even thought about the Internet, which is a pretty lofty accomplishment in these days. Sci-Fi Crimes is not about to change the world, but it is a solid album and worth your CD or download dollar.