Stinking Lizaveta Sacrifice and Bliss

[At a Loss; 2009]

Styles: instrumental heavy metal, quote-unquote post-rock
Others: Black Label Society, 박병주

I really wanted to like this band. They're named after a character in a Dostoevsky novel, and they have a female drummer who looks rough enough to polish off a fifth of gin in one sitting and then eat the bottle for good measure. Even the album's title, Sacrifice and Bliss, is properly Dostoevskian in its connotations, setting me up for some kind of musical exploration of man's search for existential self-fulfillment through self-giving. Alas, Stinking Lizaveta offer nothing quite so grand, preferring instead to meekly set forth sampling of lukewarm, ’80s-style instrumental thrash.

And from there, I'm going to make an awkward segue into my public service announcement for the evening…

ATTENTION MUSICIANS, PUBLICISTS, PRODUCERS, AND FANS: Just because a band doesn't have a singer does not ipso facto mean that they are a post-rock band.

It's a label that Stinking Lizaveta gleefully self-apply, and one that seems singularly ill-fitted to the trio. The band is positively steeped in rock. They're up to their eyeballs in it. This alone does not make them a bad band; I could embrace Stinking Lizaveta if they could confidently execute a big, dumb, fist-pumping rock sound equal to their big, dumb, fist-pumping ambitions. But for all of Yanni Papadopoulos' Zach Wylde-esque whammy-barring and Cheshire Agusta's dirge-like pounding, the songs come across thin and sparse. The riffing is painfully obvious, the tracks unfurl in a wholly linear fashion, and the guitar soloing is often too polite to register. The most egregious offenders by far are “Zeitgeist the Movie” and “We Will See,” two songs built on over-the-top riffs so generic that not even the latter's wailing theremin can rescue them from mediocrity, and these fare a hell of a lot better than the simpering ballad “When I Love You,” which, wonder of wonders, is every bit as cheesy as its title.

A share of the blame is probably due to producer Sanford Parker. There's a flatness to the production; the guitar, bass, and drums feel nakedly alone in the mix, as though the album is only half there. It sounds like an amateur effort, not the sixth (!!!) studio album from a group of seasoned musicians. While I would not consider Sacrifice and Bliss to be terrible, I am hard-pressed to think of a record more consistently underwhelming. It's just sad to see a band set the bar so low and still wrack themselves on it on the way over.

1. Autochthony! Autochthony!
2. A Day Without a Murder
3. Zeitgeist the Movie
4. When I Love You
5. Sacrifice and Bliss
6. We Will See
7. A Man Without a Country
8. Superluxation
9. Trouble Mountain
10. The Man Needs Your Pain

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