The cruelest insult you could ever hurl at a music genre is that all its principles sound ‘the same.’ And it’s a fairly common barb; c’mon, seriously, are you going to sit there and pretend you’ve never made the claim about a genre? Everyone has done it at one time or another to deflect their ignorance back at a vehement fan that wants her/him to Get It. In my lifetime, I can definitely say I’ve noticed the tag slapped onto hip-hop the most (with country coming in a close second), mainly because there are shitloads of people who, where rap is concerned, simply wouldn’t Get It if It were their own mommy. Or daddy. Or even Big Daddy Kane.
That’s just how it is; to some, the inner workings of certain music amounts to little more than repetitive devices upon repetitive devices upon repetitive devices upon repetitive devices – get the point? – with a few tweaks here and there. Sadly, the ‘It all sounds the same’ tag can often be applied successfully to the lower rungs of a genre’s ladder. Even diehard fans can see the widespread samey-ness corrupting the ever-growing field of Metal, Heavy. The Converges of the world may convince us otherwise, but there are so many copycat metal bands the copycats are starting to birth their own copycats. You could say the metal genre is getting too fat, but I’d just argue there’s more of it to love.
So yes mom, I guess in a way you’re right; many metal bands do sound a lot alike. But check this: The glut of double-bass-wielding, twin-guitar-brandishing metal practitioners only renders the true innovators in the genre that much more respectable. Wetnurse, whose Invisible City dropped all the way back in September (I didn’t write a review until now because I’m a copycat reviewer, and a slow one), pull a lot of punches within the many ripples of their body of sound, going beyond the stale tricks of the trade – acoustic intros, predictable buildups, a synth or two – to flesh out their arrangements with hot-pink accents like opera singing (courtesy of Stephanie Gravelle), long expanses of calm bookended by split-second rampages, and ridiculous, cartoon-y vocal stunts that lunge from guttural growl to pea-pod soprano in seconds.
There’s also a huge helping of the aforementioned tricks of the trade; just about every tune either starts acoustic or ends acoustic, and there are lots of synth pushes that will get your attention. But overall Wetnurse’s attack is much too Chose Your Own Adventure to knock, too next-level to question. The guitars are downright vicious at times, the drums and bass always holding steady, and the singer always keeps the journey rolling no matter how many bumps rise up in the road.
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