To say Portland’s UADA has “blown up” during the two years between Cult Of A Dying Sun and what we now have before us in the form of its all-important third album is the height of understatement. High profile tours (remember tours?), the made-for-mass-consumption safety of its music, and the band’s ridiculous “left hand presence” photos of late have taken what I believe was a decent “enough” second album, and sculpted the quartet into basically melodic black metal’s GHOST.
The title track begins sounding like some bastard wedding of Morricone high on bath salts and an even more tremolo-heavy ALESTORM, all jiggy-jangly, and zero fucking substance. UADA will tell you it’s a melding of four minds, but, with the album produced, mixed, mastered and written by one Jake Superchi, not even one song in, and Djinn already sounds like The Final Cut-era PINK FLOYD with the level of disconnect between instruments as apparent. Around 5 ½ minutes in, our twee wanderers herd themselves into something like a tune, blessedly holding it together until the 7-minute mark, where it all falls to shit again.
With two songs over 13 minutes long, and taking up half of the album’s playing time, you’d hope for at least a bit of cohesiveness within their playing time. Alas, ‘No Place Here’ skitters about, Superchi & co. hurling every random idea against some genre-less, undefinable wall and calling it art in hopes that something of substance will stick. YES, KING CRIMSON, even CAPTAIN BEEFHEART at his most schizophrenic never were as disjointed as what I’m hearing here. The bloody thing just doesn’t go anywhere, and, prog fan that I am, I’m genuinely trying here.
I suppose, if there were to be a high point in Djinn (aside from the ending), ‘Forestless’ largely abandons the mish-mash method, but it’s not enough to save UADA from having delivered what amounts to a collection of bad ideas forced into fruition, then pummeled, wrung sun-bleached-carcass dry, and strung up on display in the desert night. In all, maybe not a bad fate for this album. Fool me once, UADA, shame on you…
Review By: Lord Randall
UADA
Djinn
Eisenwald
0 / 6