Wackiness.org Reviews Archive § Music

Dredg's debut CD, Leitmotif, is a great mixture of instrumental and hard rock music, all even numbered tracks being fully instrumental with a variety of sounds and styles to help meld together all of the tracks into a full and complete album. Their emphasis on the music as a whole as opposed to the lyrics (which tend to be quite unrecognizable most of the time) create much more of an ambient "vibe" than a radio-ready song list. They still maintain a fairly decent amount of "mainstream" in them, though, enough to keep them from going too far into the indie genre.

Leitmotif puts forth a multitude of emotions within a 60 minute period, jumping back and forth between the intricate guitar-based instrumentals and the weighty, almost grungish, vocal overlaid "choruses," shown probably the best in "Penguins in the Desert." This is also not a slow album. The progressions between tracks are usually quite abrupt and the style change follows suit. This does not hurt the album and it works out well, as it is fitting with the tracks themselves. The slower tracks that do exist, though, are very powerful and are great contrast to the rest of the blury high-tone tracks of the album. "Movement V: 90 Hour Sleep," excluding the hidden track, fits just such a slower class, and is probably the best way to wrap up such an album, in my opinion.

The heaviness does control most of this album, though, which may be a bit too much for some, but if you are like me, you had your Tool-phase and have now moved onto a more indie-based world of music. In which case, this album is perfect for you. I recommend it to just such a person, as well as anyone who can handle a bit of harshness with their music.

Rating

82/100

Reviewer

Zeff Svoboda

Published

December 03, 2003