home > browse > cd-feature > view article

Celan: "Halo"

  Tobias

A fast-food recipe that will appeal to very specific tastes, Celan is a risky test-run album co-operated by classically trained pianist Ari Benjamin Meyers (a sometime contributer to Einstürzende Neubauten) and Unsane singer Chris Spencer, whose deal, should you be unfamiliar with Unsane, is angry-young-wifebeater-hollering over garage-doom rancor that’s more attuned to roots hardcore than the sort of plain-Jane roaring-pirate-metal that Neurosis, whose preferred speed is sluggishly similar, does.

With me? No? Can’t say’s I blame you if you’re a thrasher or tend to avoid music that wants to toss you on a catapult and fire you at platoons of Orcs, but even if you’re jiggy with this in the least, it’s Spencer’s yelling and paint-by-number Crowbar-like riffing that’s mostly running the show, with Meyers and his eggheadisms confined to the quieter moments.

“It’s Low” has designs on smarter, Einstürzende/Swans/Foetus-like anti-pomp with Maximum Rock n Roll overtones, a place where these two minds actually melded instead of swapping turns in the spotlight.

By Eric Saeger

Homepage: Celan
Homepage: Exile on Mainstream Records