Goblin Cock Come With Me If You Want to Live

[Robcore; 2009]

Styles: anything but biker metal, yet biker metal
Others: Heavy Vegetable, Three Mile Pilot, Pinback, Systems Officer

Once again, I find reviews vomited out on other, inferior sites to be hilarious. I mean, who knew? I guess this Rob Crow guy can write a good melody! HOW ’BOUT THAT!? And also, those who paid absolutely no attention to Crow’s career arc over the last half-decade seem surprised that he managed such a competent metal album. Maybe it’s just me, but I thought after hearing Pinback’s Offcell EP, it was obvious that half of the duo was subtly dipping into more metallic structures, and it fo’ damn sho’ wasn’t the Zach Smith half. But again, maybe it’s just me.

And, you know, there was that first, also-ass-plowingly-good Goblin Cock record (I know, it came out four whole years ago, drag). Which also would have been a pretty good place to start, as would several of the other 18-odd projects Rob is Crow-ing about (some of which also dabble, or flat-out revel, in heaviness). I’m just sayin’.

But what it all comes down to is simple: No matter what you think you’re getting when you rip into a Rob Crow album — while ripped (don’t deny it) — you’re still getting just that: a Rob Crow album. Dress it up in frilly dresses, indie-rock attire, or robes and monolithic, swollen cocks — you’re still getting his straining-(albeit successfully)-to-hit-the-high-notes voice, his direction, his label, and his guitar playing.

And in no way is that depressing. Come With Me If You Want to Live never relents under the weight of its side-project status, nor does it pale significantly in comparison to more “serious” metal acts, nor is it in any way a piss-take. In fact, if you eliminate Cock from the equation (not that I’m saying you should; it results in one of the best double entendres ever), there’s no reason not to take this troupe as seriously as you would a metal group that actually pretends to worship the stereotypical images Crow and Co. ironically splash across their canvas.

The entire kit and caboodle is soldered together by mid-album track “Beneath the Valley of the Island of Misfit Toys,” a death metal-inspired romp that never gets old despite its lack of vocals or change in dynamic. Pancaked above and below this strangely addicting track are a total of nine titanic tunes, some of them memorable, some of them not so much, and all of them very much of a piece.

Many of the songs sound as if they were written in about five minutes, and they probably were. I remember interviewing Pinback’s Smith around the time of Summer in Abaddon and marveling at how unforgiving he was toward Crow’s multi-tiered hierarchy of side projects, basically intimating that Crow’s obsession with new projects hinders the quality of each product. (On that note, Smith has been playing his anti-Crow role to the hilt, failing to put out a Systems Officer full-length after a nice EP in 2004 and also neglecting to issue any further news on a reported Three Mile Pilot reunion [which he admitted was announced mainly to motivate its prospective participants to get down to business; obviously the strategy did not work.])

So I guess what I’m saying is I’d rather have a knee-deep batch of wavering quality from Crow than a big fat donut-with-neverending-hole of inactivity. What’s more, Come With Me If You Want to Live is a great example of how writing songs in hectic fashion can result in a set of tunes that irrevocably are of a piece, of a mind, each entry tying up the loose ends behind it and beginning the knots that will be completed by the next link in the chain.

As complicated as I manage to make it sound, it’s a simple pleasure, and sometimes that’s for the best.

1. Hissless
2. Loch
3. Big Up Your Willies
4. We Got a Bleeder
5. Ode to Billy Jack
6. Beneath the Valley of the Island of the Misfit Toys
7. Haint
8. Mylar
9. Tom’s Song for (T.O.F.)
10. Trying to Get Along with Humans

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