NOW I'VE DONE IT

NOW I'VE DONE IT     "An Ill Guest"

By Dr. Abner Mality

"Weird music for weird people", the PR sheet says. I'll bite: weird I am.

And weird this is, but perhaps not as much as NOW I'VE DONE IT think. This is a neurotic mix of harsh metal with happy cartoon music, jazz and symphonic elements. Not many people working this side of the street, but there are some. The cruelly ignored STOLEN BABIES, UNEXPECT and a band that should really get a lot more credit, DOG FASHION DISCO come to mind. At no point is "An Ill Guest" a typical metal album. You have to be open to whiplash stylistic changes, jazzy brass, demented piano runs and insane vocal gymnastics to appreciate this.

It actually starts out pretty well. "Disillusion" starts with pretty and minimalist piano melody and becomes a dreamy kind of lullaby...before exploding into a cacophonous black metal style croak and a manic burst of energy. The main vocals here tend to be extremely harsh, which I think hurts NOW I'VE DONE IT; the excellent Todd Jones from DOG FASHION DISCO and Dominique from STOLEN BABIES are outstanding singers able to croon as well as croak. We don't get a lot of that here. Nevertheless, the song is compellingly strange and leads into the excellent "Dilly Dally", a high energy combo of OINGO BOINGO cartoon jazz with a metal backbone. If Carl Stalling was a metalhead, he'd write a song like this.

The first half of the album is an appealing madhouse and mixture of styles, with "Offering" and "Panache" being fun and crazy, but as the album moves along, the constant herky-jerky switching of tempos and themes becomes increasingly exhausting. The constant layers of Dada-esque cartoon vocals gets wearying on "Collywobbles" and "Kindling" and the spell that NIDI originally cast is wearing off. Although at all times, the technical ability of the musicians is unimpeachable.

In the end, this gets too cutesy and manic for its own good. There's definite fun to be had here for open minds, but NOW I'VE DONE IT is not quite on the level of other avant-garde jazz metal outfits.

NOW I'VE DONE IT