Casket Salesmen – Sleeping Giants

Despite the fact that quite a few other musicians play different instruments or accompany tracks with back up vocals on Sleeping Giants, Phil Pirrone and Nathan Lindeman are the only 2 official members ofCasket Salesmen. The whole vision and creation of the debut album is the work of these 2 men, who at one point oddly enough were part of the foundation of screamo act A Static Lullaby. Its odd becauseSleeping Giants is a complete departure from any of their previous association with the screamo and punk scenes and instead embraces a more alternative / experimental rock side of Phil and Nathan.

The album starts off strongly with the catchy “I’ll Buy That For A Dollar“, which features straight up rock verses with soaring vocals that liven the chorus and is complemented nicely with a powerful instrumental bridge. It immediately showcases that Phil and Nathan are headed in a new direction, but it can be a bit misleading as a preview to the rest of the album. The next song “Dr. Jesus” follows on the same path but doesn’t have the power or drive of the first track and starts to show a bit of “Sleeping Giant[’s]” bland weakness early on in the album. The disc continues with “Shanghai Sally”, which changes the formula of the previous tracks dramatically and is the first of three instrumental tracks that all end up being songs that will be skipped after only a couple of listens. The first two of the instrumentals are nearly identical sounding with drums giving a beat that is repeated over and over as eerie noises fly through the background on one and then replaced by native chants on the other. These two tracks are nothing special and the 3rd instrumental, more of a rock song than background noise doesn’t do much for me either and in my opinion all 3 of the songs weaken the album. While there are only 3 full instrumental tracks, a lot of “Sleeping Giants” is built on experimental rock with no vocals and as a result every song has at least one breakdown that gives the instruments a chance to shine. Most of the time these breakdowns are effective especially in “The Anaheimlich Maneuver” which features a jazzy bridge enriched with the saxophone before erupting into a well executed guitar solo to end the song. They don’t all sound as beautiful as this or add a new dimension and occasionally can drag a song on longer then it should have been.

Sleeping Giants demonstrates the talent Phil and Nathan have when it comes to writing and playing experimental rock. Most of the tracks high points are the parts where the singing stops and freedom is given to the instrumentation, but one of my biggest complaints happens to be that a lot of the songs are also dull sounding. The album comes across dreary and makes me think of a dark miserable rainy day, and just like rainy days there’s only so much you can take before you get sick of it.