American Heritage - Through the Age of Quarrel and Into the Era of Putting Up With It
(Troubleman Unlimited)
With every new heavy metal album that comes out on an indie
label, we get closer and closer to the time when I can go to
a record store and walk up to someone five or ten years younger
than me looking through the selection of a band like American
Heritage and say to him, "Yeah, that band's okay, but you
should hear Don Caballero. They were doing metal when these
guys were still in middle school listening to grunge."
American Heritage are much in the spirit of Don Caballero, bringing
the graphing calculator to practice with them as they create some
ripe, heavy instru-metal. If the cover art is not enough of a
tip-off, American Heritage separates themselves by being a snotty
little punk band. Being pure punks, the album starts with a computer
voice singing about ladies' panties to the tune of "God Save the Queen" and
ends with some standard computerized beats (what the fast forward
and stop buttons are made for, respectively). In between though,
all you get is the metal, aggressive and loud but never irritatingly
so.
Of course, like Don Caballero, American Heritage do not create metal
just to be loud; it is math metal with much care towards making the
riffs and rhythms complex and interesting. They know when the volume
needs to be turned up to 10, and when it is better set at 8 so that
more nuance can be heard--that is, however much nuance can be heard
when the volume is still way up there at 8. Even during these "down"
times, though, the band is plenty loud and plenty fast; there is hardly
any time to breathe as the music is so dense and furious.
There's a balance between being heavy enough to rock and so
heavy that a band comes off abrasive and unlistenable. American
Heritage is about as brutal and heavy as a band can get before it starts
to get on your nerves. So, when I walk into that proverbial
record store five years from now, I won't be able to laugh
at the kid buying an American Heritage record; I guess I'll
be picking one up as well.
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