Review Summary: A potentially amazing album let down by a few mediocre tracks and pointless instrumentals.
It's fair to say that
dredg are far from one-trick ponies. Every album they seem to diversify and alter their sound dramatically, no more so than in the three years between the release of
El Cielo and
Catch Without Arms, which saw the band taking a more simplified and straightforward approach to their songwriting.
The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion sees the band further poppifying their sound, with more vocal hooks and catchy guitar lines while at the same time showing off elements of experimentation that were all but missing from their previous outing.
Pariah can be seen as a concept album of sorts, loosely based around ideas from the Salman Rushdie essay "Imagine There's No Heaven: A Letter to the 6 Billionth Citizen", most notably the idea of belief systems, specifically religion but also politics and science. The songs seem to question the actions of these believers,
Pariah and
Information specifically with the lines of "delusions/never really justify/justify the things you do" and describing their actions as "gift to a god without a name", a possible reference to terrorist acts performed by religious extremists. The 'Stamp of Origin' interludes tie in with the idea of the 'Letter to the 6 Billionth Citizen', and are used to keep the concept flowing through the album, akin to the 'Brushstroke' interludes on
El Cielo. However, the similarities between the two end there. Whereas an understanding of
El Cielo's concept was key to enjoying and connecting with the album,
Pariah's is just another part of what makes the album great, and doesn't really better or worsen the album.
Also, the interludes on
El Cielo were not only there to tie in with the concept, they bookended the album into sections, and worked really well as individual songs.
Pariah's interludes on the other hand are there for purely conceptual reasons; they merely consist of minimal guitar/keyboards and a few quietly sung lines, as such they aren't really that musically interesting; perfect material for skipping. As well as the interludes there are also instrumentals littered around the album which, to put it bluntly, are nothing more than just filler tracks; they don't seem to serve any purpose other than to show off
dredg's experimental side and to pad the album out, so to speak.
Indeed, the real quality of the album is found in the 'proper' songs, some of which are
dredg's best to date. The aforementioned
Pariah and
Information are both highlights, alongside the ironically downbeat
Cartoon Showroom, and the album's 'ballad'
Ireland. But for me, the best song on the album is
Quotes, which contains one of the best build ups of any song in recent times, culminating as Gavin sings "so just let go" with his soaring vocals, while Dino's drum fill paves the way for Mark and Drew to come back in with some slow sweeping chords; absolutely beautiful. One of the weak points of
Catch Without Arms was it's lack of variety between tracks, thankfully this issue has been resolved to a certain extent on
Pariah. The (sort of) title track is a perfectly constructed pop-rock song with a bouncing main riff and soaring chorus filled with vocal melodies;
Light Switch is rather mellow in comparison, employing the use of soothing violins to create a sedated feel, while
Saviour is a poppy electronic based track, tinged with heavy guitars reminiscent of their nu-metal days, though this isn't necessarily a good thing and results in it being one of the weakest songs on here. Speaking of which,
I Don't Know is another weak spot on the album, coming across as an extremely repetitive pop song, the same issue that plagued
Spitshine on
Catch Without Arms.
Still, mediocre tracks aside,
The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion is an excellent addition to dredg's discography. It may be the weakest of
dredg's four albums but it's by no means bad, on the contrary, without all the filler it could easily have been as good as
Leitmotif or even
El Cielo. As it stands though,
Pariah is simply a really good album full of great songs, and at this stage that's all we could've asked for from the fledging four-piece.
