Review Summary: I think I’m having a seizure
Part 1 - an introduction to the review
So there’s this kid, 9-or-so, who walks into his local candy store. Pupils dilated, wearing a chocolate-encrusted t-shirt and with a glib of drool forming in the corner of his mouth: he waltzes in, this child, into the store, casually, and (I
shit you not) decks the store clerk. Slapped across the face with a semi-clenched fist of gummy worms and knocked clean out, this chieftain of confectionery is deftly taken care of. Thusly, our irresponsible non-adult ducks beneath the store counter, pops open an assortment of glass jars and makes off with an unnecessarily large horde of variably coloured monosaccharides.
A successful heist. It’s only as he totters back down the highstreet, swaying,
beaming, and with most of the liquorice whip already scoffed, that the sugar-shakes start to kick in. Something’s off,
non bene, and our glucose-fueled thief knows it. One step, two step, three step …
barf. Hurled skyward, explosive in projection: rainbow-hued jets of half-congealed stomach juices erupt up-down-left-right
everywhere out of poor Billy’s now-not-beaming-and-really-quite-distressed cakehole.
This - an off-green jelly, speckled with mutilated gummy-bears and sherbert lemons -
this - a sour-sweet sludge, sauteed with this morning’s porridge and last Thursday’s mac-and-cheese -
THIS - a gunky spray of gelatinous juvenile chunder - is
So much. Too much.
Part 2 - the review
If Lamb of God got high with Genghis Tron, partied ‘till dawn with Protest the Hero and had an affair with the Callous Daoboys, you’d probably end up with something like the palpably-mad Italian quartet, Destrage, whose sixth studio outing so closely resembles the sticky residue of an overindulged infant. That’s not to say that their latest hyperactive hodgepodge of proggy-mathy-metalcore is icky or unhygienic or
bad - don’t let the hamfisted vomit metaphor mislead you - but, rather, alludes to just how volatile, excessive and hideously colorful of a riff-fountain it really is.
“A Commercial Break That Lasts Forever”, the Dillinger-styled introduction to this sickly slip n’ slide, shrieks and shudders like a DevilDriver cover played not with guitars but, instead, by applying a hamster to a cheesegrater. Its shrill fretboard acrobatics are as erratic as they come - Mr Nibbles scraped well-and-truly raw by the time the track’s radio-friendly chorus and synths kick in - yet even this eclectic opener provides little insight into the giddy depths of Destrage’s glazed-and-sprinkled proclivities. Still to come: the jazz-y slap-bass lurching of “Venice Has Sunk”, grooving and popping its way (somehow) into a supple post-rockian crescendo; the gloriously djenty nonsense of “Italian Boi”, intermittently moonlighting as a catchy alt-metal singalong; and the almost-ordinary thrash-esque ballad of “Is It Still Today?”, reverb-laden and solo-stuffed and epic and soaring and
everything. It is, as advertised,
too much. The carpet don’t match the drapes; soured porridge and liquorice whip ain’t simpatico; these genre pairings do not make sense … until they
do.
The fluorescent audial diarrhea of
So much. Too much. has two redemptive graces: (a) songwriting (which is good) and (b) pacing (which is also good). Its idiosyncrasies and eccentricities are, unexpectedly, intentional, dosed carefully and appropriately to avoid sugar-crazed catatonia. The flamboyant romps of “Private Party” and “Imposter”
work, swinging radio-rock choruses and all,
because (not
in spite) of the cartoonish, brick-walled riff-work they’re sandwiched between: excelling as the relative respite before/after the storm. So too can be said of the goofy rap stanzas peppering lead-single “Everything Sucks…”, by no means suited to the track’s technical, angular melodies but, rather, acting as a refreshingly self-aware anchorpoint to the bombast and silliness that underlies and unites the record. This careful craftsmanship (seen also in the record’s excellent circa-psychedelic interludes, as well as Paolo Colavolpe’s consistently absurd vocals) grants cohesion where there ought to be none, transforming what first appears to be an unlistenable mishmash of incompatible ideas into a grin-inducing spectacle worthy of your time.
Upon closer inspection, then, this candy-infused mess is no sloppy accident. Its sprinkling of stomach acids is, instead, performative - a meticulous projection of well-thought-out insanity, not subservient to the chaos, but channeling it. Weaponising countless tootie-fruity tricks, its tangfastic regurgitation is
enthralling. Unsurprisingly, there is some spillage. Trying to achieve quite so much all at once is simply not possible, and, in seeking to do so,
So much. Too much. can risk feeling jarring and reductive. Its whistle-stop tour of the vastness of everything lacks the depth that makes everything, well,
everything, but that’s okay. Switch off your inner-critic for just a second, bask in Destrage’s delectable spectrum of madness, and the resultant joyride is all that it needs to be:
fun as hell.
Part 3 - the bit after the review
On reflection, I haven’t got a clue what I was talking about in part 1. You should probably just skip that bit.
