Johnny Truant – No Tears For The Creatures

  • Keith Rosson posted
  • Reviews

No Tears For The Creatures - Distort Entertainment

Yet again, here’s another technically stunning hardcore band with heavy metallic leanings and off-kilter-as-fuck song structures. Yet again. Good Christ, there’s so many bands doing this sort of thing right now that it’s actually getting really difficult to tell them apart. And Johnny Truant, apart from their stunning album art – terrifically disturbing close-up paintings of various animals’ teeth and gums that absolutely fits thematically with the doom-laden imagery and sounds the band’s throwing out there – they aren’t doing much to set themselves apart form the rest of the herd.

First song, “The Grotusque,” gives a terrific indication of what the rest of the album will sound like: disjointed, intentionally-mangled guitar parts battling with a stop-on-a-dime rhythm section, the occasional double-bass section (most notably in “Last Arms of the Apocalypse”) or pick-scream sneaking through the mix. All the while a guy bellows such poetic but ultimately obtuse lines like “Tattoo the crotch of the heavenly father / Young blood you’ve got the best of me.” Unfortunately – and this could be the listener’s fault as much as the band’s, I suppose – but the band isn’t doing much to separate one song from the next; it all just blends into one long instance of five obviously talented musicians suffering from a severe case of riff-rage.

To his credit, vocalist Oliver Mitchell’s got some pretty dark lines: multiple references to beasts, rats, wolves, lambs, blood, ships and children abound throughout the record. Despite all that, in all but a very few cases, I have absolutely no idea what the fuck he’s talking about – there’s some wonderful lines there but it ultimately just comes across as bombastic. No, that’s being unkind – reading Johnny Truant’s lyrics is essentially like looking at Japanese calligraphy; I can appreciate the form but it’s about as functional or decipherable, to me, as The Pet Rock©.

Still, technical prowess abounds with these guys – in a purely sonic sense, it’s some pretty smoking background noise. But as someone who was weaned on the simplicity of punk rock, listening to shit like this is a lot like listening to country music – it all sounds the same to me, it all just blends together into one big palm-muted breakdown; a collection of riffs piecemealed together, rather than a gathering of songs.

But if you’re into crazed, epic-style hardcore with some definite metal leanings – try it out. Mayhap you’ll get more of a sense of wholeness and completion out of it than I did. Most likely for fans of Tragedy, Kathleen Turner Overdrive, Dillinger Escape Plan or maybe current Deathwish or, hell, even Bridge 9 rosters.