Review Summary: Although this isn't a great album and it keeps getting held back by its same sounding songs and lack of a decent production, it's still a solid album that longtime fans of the band will wanna hear.
Way back in 2002, after even Everything you wanted to Know About Silence, Glassjaw released Woshrip and Tribute, to mixed success. On one hand its a cool, raw, unrefined post hardcore classic but on the other its maybe a little TOO raw and unrefined for my tastes. It certainly starts out pretty cool with the song Tip Your Bartender, likely a little nod to the band's name. Its a very interesting guitar intro; who knew that the guys could play so well way back then? But unfortunately that is not long lived as it quickly transitions into Mu Empire. That leads me to my first problem, which is the titles. They use to have the Fall Out Boy syndrome where their titles would always be a thousand words long and make no sense. Hardly a major concern though, the song itself is pretty good. Its got a catchy dissonant riff and some cool vocals.
Vocals are interesting on this album; Daryls's voice hadn't really changed since then, so the vocals on this album seem very raw. Sometimes they actually work in the songs favor like here and Stuck Pig, but they seem to get a little more worn as the album goes on. Maybe they recorded it all at once, I don't know. What I do know is that the vocals for the first few songs are great, but you can't really say the same thing about the silly lyrics. If you couldn't guess the album is about heartbreakers then just close your browser and go to bed. The lyrics are very silly and metalcore esque, and though they aren't technically bad, it just feels really over the top. Having said all that the songs themselves are very good.
And like so many other albums, after the first few tracks, it kind of starts repeating itself. Ape Dos Mil is another great song and has a really cool riff and Stuck Pig is a weird but sort of cool dissonance song. But after that the songs start to kind of sound the same with maybe the acception of Trailer Park Jesus. The only downside is that it's 5 minutes long and definitely wears out it's welcome before too long. And by the end you're kind of bored and just want to go back and listen to the beginning again, but overall it's definitely not a bad album. I think Glassjaw learned from their mistakes and made a slightly more polished album with Coloring Book. But its definitely an interesting ride to take to go back and see what they used to sound like.
