Labels: Ronald Reagan
Review by: Kunal Nandi
I remember Kruger’s first album “Built For Speed” being a reliably sturdy blend of stoner and hardcore. Perhaps TOO sturdy. They equated heaviness with an all-engulfing chugginess which didn’t necessarily make for interesting listening. Sadly, it seems like they’ve stuck to their guns on “Cattle Truck”.
Kruger tout themselves with a superb set of influences, although perhaps it’s telling that they mention Cult Of Luna before Breach. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like Cult Of Luna, but they are at the very least an overly-simplified second-generation copy of other far better, established bands, the amazing Breach included. They also cite Eyehategod, but I don’t hear that at all “” there’s very little in the way of syncopation or kickass sickening riffs.
In my opinion, one influence they’re missing off their list is Meshuggah – not because they’re wildly technical (far from it in fact), but because they share a very mechanical approach with their writing and production, which can seem almost inhuman. With Meshuggah that can be incredible and frightening, but here it’s borderline dull. The problem is that there is a complete lack of dynamics to the music. Loud and heavy is fine by me, but where’s the rest of it? Each song steamrollers in, hangs around for too long (8 song in 50 minutes?), and then ends in time for the next ostensibly similar song to barge its way through. The monotony extends to the vocal delivery. A vaguely annoying bark, that at times gives way to some ill-advised sung passages, and the odd bit of talking that reminds me of Rammstein (not a good thing). The other musicians are highly proficient. Boringly so.
There are some great moments on this: “I Hate This Band” kicks off with some nice Isis-style melodics, only much less subtle. Track 4, “Captain America”, kicks off with a righteous faster tempo, but that could be because the previous three tracks have all been pretty samey. The Depeche Mode cover (!) is pretty damn good too in a Helmet kind of way. They state that they are aiming for a musical place somewhere between Neurosis and Entombed “” they’ve got something interesting going on, but it’s not quite there yet.