You know when someone says they’ve got a really good joke and you have to then tolerate five or so minutes of excruciating boredom whilst they pursue it with an insistence and an abandon bordering on cruelty, then you’ll know how it feels when someone says they’ve got a concept album they want to play you. First off, you have to be interested. Second, you have to be interested. And thirdly you have to be interested enough not to collapse from exhaustion halfway through it. Concept albums ask you to collude in something – share an experience, plot a similar chain of thought, accept a particular series of circumstances, a particular paradigm. Its an uneasy relationship really, as they’re asking far more of you than actual listening; they’re asking you to believe. Consider if you will the war in Iraq as a concept album: the initial request to accept a totally implausible proposition (Weapons Of Mass Destruction), a request to suspend belief (the murder of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens), the prolonged and indefensible drum and guitar solos (the speeches) and the inevitable climax (the disposal of a mythical tyrant). The trouble with concept albums, like the trouble with wars, is that the real objective often gets buried beneath layer upon layer of extravagance and self-gratification. The liberation of a people gets pushed aside by greed, the concept by self-indulgence. And ‘Drums Of Death’ is just a case in point. I never consented to this concept just like I never consented to the war in Iraq. I’ve made up my mind not to laugh at the joke way before they’ve finished telling it as I already know where it’s leading.
From the retro-futuristic album art to the interminable drums solos produced by Slayer’s Dave Lombardo we can pretty much count on a brash and totally overblown post-apocalyptic vision. Couple this with DJ Spooky’s transient soundscapes and the crunching metal guitar riffing of assorted guests and you get the picture: something awkward yet occasionally pleasing masquerading as the very last word in experimentalism.
It’s a tale of rocket-ships, space-Djs, asteroids and very very bad worlds indeed. Take it like a man.