Album Review: Savage Lands - Army of the Trees
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
“Army of the Trees” is a calamitous, shambling mess of an album that zips with schizophrenic abandon between groove metal, deftones-aping shoegaze, black metal, melodeath, rap metal, honest to god pop punk and thrash with nary the daintiest of connective threads binding it together.
The first thing to note is that Savage Lands are an environmentally friendly bunch; their songs are themed around nature, the damage mankind does to it, and the brink we seem to be rushing all too blindly towards. As such, all proceeds from this release are going towards the preservation of Costa Rican forests; for their efforts the band have drawn praise from notable luminaries both within and without metal, including a figure no less esteemed than Jane Goodall herself. I’d like to think it goes without saying that this is a noble, vital aim and I’d almost recommend buying this just to facilitate the band’s goal - I need to establish that early because one of the few twinklings of brightness in this otherwise barbarous morass of suffering is the message. The second thing to note is that this album is a collaboration by an enormous amount of artists, with so many featured that Mushroomhead look understaffed by comparison. Pop a pin in that point, because it’s going to come up a lot going forward.
We kick this harrowing pile of vegan metal off with “Black Rock Heart”, which on first look seems to be a basic if inoffensive bit of midpaced black metal; trudging kick / snare drumming, repetitive strummed riff with a simple minor key melody going on, growls, you know the type. Uninspired but not heart rending. The “palm mute e string, sporadically hit the 5th note on the 7th fret of the A string is as rudimentary as it gets for the verse, but by and large this song is just uninteresting. And then we get to the solo, which is this swaggering bluesy series of licks totally at odds with the black metal / melodeath stylings of the rest of the song; it sounds like Billy Gibbons noodling over Burzum, and it’s awkward as hell. And that – the uncomfortable mixture of elements that don’t work in conjunction – is going to become something of a theme here, because the vast majority of the songs on “Army of the Trees” hamstring themselves with infinitely frustrating clumsy diversions in subgenre, and the whole release is insanely unfocused as a result.
Alright, alright, so the intro is over with and it’s done more to underwhelm or annoy me than anything else. That’s fine, even the greats have filler sat blithely in their back catalogues. What’s next? “Ruling Queen”. As it happens, this is probably the best the album has to offer; the riffs are, again, stock standard, but they are at least a little more elaborate than the prior track, and the combination of lead work and Alissa White-Gluz’ (from Arch Enemy) clean vocals provides one of the most giant choruses on the album. Some transitions between sections – mainly when the tempo changes – are jarring in how abrupt they are, feeling somewhat unbalanced as a result, but it does go some way to redeeming this fault with a rippling shred-fest of a solo. All told, not too bad a job on this one.
Next up, we have “The Last Howl”. I didn’t know that Obituary’s revered “Slowly we Rot” opus was about non-biodegradable materials, but maybe it was, for none other than John Tardy himself shows up to belt out his inimitable roar over a track that sounds absolutely nothing like the preceding tracks. Things are getting unwieldy at this point; styles and vocalists switch and swap, clashing with prior songs and ruthlessly yanking on the leash whenever the album builds any steam at all. This one opts for a sludge/doom/psychedelic rock vibe with bits of bone-dry Americana swirling around like tumbleweed. It’s stuffed with different singers - every now and then someone will just yell out of fucking nowhere and cut off after a second as if they just fell down a frigging manhole. Bluesy Sabbath riffs jostle for space alongside flights of Mastodon-ish reverb laden prog bullshit, Tardy howls “THIS IS THE LAST HOWL” over and over and by christ I wish it was. It’s not a dead loss exactly – I really like the tapping leads towards the end for example - it’s just jumbled and disorganised. All the different vocalists feel as though they’re fighting for space, and in an attempt to maximise everyone else’s identity Savage Lands have unfortunately wound up with none of their own.
So far we’ve had a humdrum black/melodeath hybrid with the ghost of BB King dropping by for lead guitars, a more promising melodeath track, and some progressive doom thing that has no idea what it wants to be. What’s the most obvious next step? It doesn’t matter what you answer, you’re almost definitely wrong, because actually it’s time to rip off Deftones. I can see what they were going for but I cannot stand the singer on this one. He’s so nasal, whinging like a sea lion with a sinus infection, and every now and then he does this unbelievably annoying bit where he goes “OwWwWwWw” in the wavering, insipid tone of a 19th century French poet enduring the throes of ennui after stubbing his toe. It goes for the anthemic wall of sound that someone like Devin Townsend might utilise, and during the verse it’s partially successful, but the chorus leapfrogs lacklustre straight into downright emetic territory, weak, saccharine, and wetter than a drowning nymphomaniac.
But I could at least bear to listen to “No Remedy”. Periodically it lived up to it’s epic ambitions, and I can respect the attempt. But here is where we hit a nadir in a three song run that I’d rather fall bollocks first into a paper shredder than listen to again. “Out of Breath” is shot through with weird choices that derail it at every other second, from the disjointed way that it’s verse, prechorus and chorus are all so starkly different as to make absolutely fuck all sense together, to the weird metallic scraping noises in the background of the verse, the sudden inclusion of bass-heavy djent jackboots stamping drunkenly all over the second run of the verse, to the mess of different featuring vocalists, 48 straight seconds of spoken word at the end...it’s a thrashing storm of shrieking entropy that must have been conceived of in the midst of an atrociously decadent magic mushroom binge.
“Better Man” is about that recent Robbie Williams movie where he’s a chimp for some reason. It’s also the bit where Savage Lands rip off Gojira. You’ll know it when you hear it; that verse riff really isn’t a million miles from the introduction of “Flying Whales” or even one of their more sedate tracks like “Born in Winter”. The comparison is favourable for Savage Lands because this song is otherwise a hatefully languid, bland exercise in vapidity. The vocals aren't “singing” precisely, more sort of whining in key. The song feels as though it should be much gentler than it is, more subtle, but instead it has the industrial crunch of groove metal percussion hammering away behind vocal lines that are softer than a hamster fart and dainty, folksy guitar lines. It’s like hooking Mumford and Sons up to a Boss HM-2 and sticking them on a fucking battle tank. It’s ludicrous. Still, we’re more than half way through the album, so that’s...a blessing of a sort. Hopefully one thing that’s coming through loud and clear in this review is just how scatterbrained this thing is; it inhales influence after influence and regurgitates this amorphous collage devoid of rhyme or reason, and that’s quite aside from the individual – often severe – faults that specific songs have as well.
What’s next? “Never be up”, which I think is about erectile dysfunction. It’s...basically what might happen if captain Planet joined Everytime I Die, but so much worse in every way. It tries to come out swinging with a southern-fried punk rock groove, and if it weren’t for the singer – again, it’s the guy who sounds like he has terminal congestion, if this guy ever sneezes he’ll instantly drop 4 stone and his whole house will be fucking green – it might be worth considering as a passable pastiche? Maybe? I dunno, I don’t think it’s heavy enough to sell what it seems to be going for. Drop to a lower string and perhaps we’d be cooking with...probably not gas, powdered owl shit or something.
How many left? 3 songs? This album has flipped like a bipolar gymnast between alright but uninspired in sections to ungodly terrible in others with sparse occurrences of genuine enjoyment dotted here and there, rarer than unicorn sightings. We have the title track to contend with now; it was released as a single, was the first song i’d heard from the band, and while not the worst thing here by endless miles, it still raised more than a few red flags. But it is at least possible to speak of the virtues this song possesses; the riff is...conventional but sprightly, the way additional notes within chords ring and jangle out adds a flavourful layer to the track, and the solo is absolutely scorching. Those merits do have to sit alongside the presence of rap metal, however. look, rap and metal can and have worked together before, it’s not a union always fated to failure, but it is the case that the attempt often does flounder, and I’m not sold on the success of this particular instance either. It’s bouncy and has a punch for sure, but sat next to the overwrought, whingy chorus it seems out of place. I don’t hate this one, it’s interesting in terms of its component parts, and it’s upbeat enough to prompt a bit of a head bop, but if I wasn’t reviewing this, I’d literally never listen to it again.
“Visions of Life”. To give credit where it’s due, I was at least kind of on board with it initially. Kinetic, brisk pace. Time signature wasn’t 4/4 which is always something I like to hear. Then the pop punk chorus came on and I about chucked my whole fucking sound system out the window. Seriously, how many genres so far have we managed to sandwich together in a misguided shot at eclecticism? Foregoing how banal the chorus is, it’s an agonising, cringeworthy, blitheringly jaunty juxtaposition with the more darksome, morbid metalcore riff that leads into it. The song begins in a rather threatening place, but instead of some 9 foot xenomorph manifesting from the shade to punch your brains through the back of your skull, instead a crosseyed yammering chihuahua flops out the shadows and commences weeing on itself. It’s far too upbeat and comes across like getting a sugar rush at the site of mass grave. It’s a huge shame because there’s otherwise promise here – Dirk’s (Megadeth drummer) toms pound a grim portent of pain to come and an excellent, melodious but technically adept solo erupts forth with volcanic power. It’s a snarling wyvern of a song, but fuck that chorus is awful.
Last one! We’re almost done! The terrible albatross around my neck for the last 40 or so minutes is finally stirring! Can Savage Lands at least stick the landing?
No. An unholy, corrupt, benighted conjoined twin of Pheriphery djentiness and the sleazy croon of Velvet Revolver is instead what I’m supposed to come to terms with. Fine. I’ve come this far. The guitars vacillate and wibble like a boob in a high breeze. It does not gel in any way shape or form with the laid back vocal delivery schmoozing on above it. It’s just emblematic of every issue I’ve had with this nightmare so far. The dipping and diving into clashing styles within the same song, the sheer diversity of sounds crippling any shot at unity or clarity that the album might otherwise have had, boring interpretations of many of the styles they employ, awkward transitions between sections which don’t belong together, on and on and on the roll call of pitfalls goes. There is an unbelievable quantity of talent on display at any given point in the album, so it’s exasperating and bewildering in roughly equal measure to see it fall so far short of it’s promise here.
Given the message, this album is technically ecoterrorism. Incapable of burning my house down for the crime of having sausages in the fridge, they’ve instead hatched a dastardly plot to make me gouge my eardrums out with pencils. This album made me want to invest in logging companies. I want so profoundly to recommend this on the grounds of the cause the album represents but I can’t in good conscience do that when I’ve had as bad a time as I have with “Army of the Trees”. It’s possible that, considering the sheer amount of ground covered, you might find something laudable here – but the other edge on that blade is that it’s likely as not that you’ll also be confronted with plenty you don’t care for. I wish Savage Lands the best; their mission is honourable, but alas, I’m judging them solely on the basis of their musical output. On that level, it’s a resounding “no” from me.
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