California X – Nights In The Dark

California X have released their second album Nights In The Dark. It is just that. You run out into the vast openness of the shadows, free of all the penetrating stares found in the light of day, until you are finally…lost. Lost in your thoughts, lost in the myriad of human questions that divide us from the animals.

And then you are physically lost, too. Walk far enough from the beaten path and you diverge into a new void. California X (from Massachusetts!)  did that. The first half of this album is tight. I blame Dinosaur Jr. and Speedy Ortiz‘s Justin Pizzoferrato engineering skills for that one. It opens up with a title track that kicks your teeth in…but slowly peters out. The album meanders about after “Blackrazor (pt.1)” and really shows the 70’s rock influences for the band with long guitar solos and distortion taking over.

I’m bored by “Garlic Road” and the two part “Summer Wall” doesn’t hold my attention at all. “Blackrazor (pt. 2)” has a Hot Water Music vibe to it, so that rules. “Red Planet” helps get the album started off in the right direction and I would like to see more like it. Vocals seem to take a backseat to guitar solos on the back end of the album and sounds a lot like a later Coheed and Cambria album to me.

Darkness makes meandering about an escape from the everyday. Finding a path, or making a new path out of old byways makes one sound like they are on a Led Zepplin binge rather than poet laureates of punk rock.