2010 Translation Loss Records

4 out of 5

Reading the various other reviews of East of the Wall's Ressentiment scattered around the Internet has awakened my inner Comic Book Guy. The responses to the album, which was released in July, have been pretty evenly split between praise and criticism of the band's "new" use of vocals, revealing the critics' lack of background. Given the convoluted history of the band, however, such ignorance is understandable. ahem ...

Hopefully I can set the record straight here for a few newcomers confused or put off by the apparent sudden change of direction. Ressentiment is not really an East of the Wall record. Well, it is, but it isn't.

East of the Wall — in its current-as-of-this-review incarnation — is actually an amalgamation of sorts of the instrumental post-metal band which gained some recognition with its first album, Farmers Almanac, and sister project Biclops. Biclops had the vocals. Ressentiment was recorded with the intention of being released as the first Biclops record. Instead, the two groups, each comprising almost all of the same members, folded into a single project and instead the record was put out as the second East of the Wall album. East of the Wall had recently been signed to Translation Loss records (Rosetta, Mouth of the Architect, Dysrhythmia) and it only made sense for everybody to climb on board since they were almost the same band to begin with.

All complex genealogy aside, Ressentiment (finally) emerged as a worthy addition to the impressive catalog of both East of the Wall and its several predecessors (see The Postman Syndrome, Day Without Dawn). While direct comparisons to Farmers Almanac are, for the reasons stated above, somewhat unfair, there are stylistic parallels worth mentioning that almost allow the band to pass the record off as the natural continuation of that earlier record's direction, and at times encompass elements of each preceding band. As with East of the Wall before the merger, the bass is front and center, high in the mix and drives many of the songs melodically. "Fleshmaker" and the quick-paced opener "The Ladder" could be taken as  continuations of the pummeling aggression with an evasive hookiness that set the Postman Syndrome's debut Terraforming apart from the East Coast metalcore pack of the time. Ressentiment's numerous instrumental segues aren't too far removed from the Farmers Almanac material, except for the noticeably denser percussion from drummer Seth Rheam, who replaced original drummer Mike Sommers in the merger. "Ocean of Water" and the outstanding "Fool's Errand" draw on Day Without Dawn's knack for weaving together tricky melodic ideas and maintaining the eerie textures of the best of post-rock without that genre's tedious arrangements.

All this diversity ends up leading to one of Ressentiment's few flaws — the record lacks some of the cohesion of previous albums from the Postman family. It becomes obvious how creative the band can be, and you get the sense that in writing the songs they had a huge pile of ideas to pull from. Unfortunately, they didn't do as well at connecting them as in the past and this creates a sense of meandering on some of the tracks between the really good parts. But in the end, those parts are usually good enough to forgive and forget anything leading up to them that might have lost you.

There are, however, some common threads that unite the album to a degree. The songs are, on the whole, faster and darker and feature much trickier rhythmic ideas than any of the members' previous work. The band has fully embraced dissonance, as is apparent on tracks like "Salieri" and "Handshake in your Mouth." Where Farmers Almanac was essentially a post-metal record with flourishes of jazz, death metal and other genres thrown in for good measure, the songs on Ressentiment are tougher to make comparisons with.

Ressentiment also marks the members' first release since The Postman Syndrome's 2001 debut, Terraforming, which has received significant label support, a benefit immediately apparent in the record's glossy production.

Ressentiment may not be the best place to start for newcomers to the Postman brand, but taken in the context of its roots, the album is a notable, if occasionally flawed continuation of the band's penchant for pushing the stylistic envelope. Hopefully they will keep their current lineup together long enough to write and release the next album. The pool of talent has never been deeper.