Mindless Self Indulgence – If

One week too late. It always happens one week too late. A band will come to town, it’ll be a band that I’ve heard of but nothing by and decide to skip the show. A week will pass and some reason or another I’ll get a hold of the band’s CD and fall in love with it; but alas, the band never comes back. It happened withMuse four years ago and they still haven’t made another appearance in town yet and now it’s happening with Mindless Self Indulgence. The industrial/punk/rock/synth/chaos band played a show here a few weeks ago and I decided to skip it, the next day a friend proclaimed it to be the best show she had ever seen and a week later if was in stores. I got a copy and as the pulsating beat of Never Wanted To Dance pounded through the speakers for the first time I knew I had a missed one hell of a show.

You see if starts off with pure adrenaline. The songs are brimming with distorted vocals and guitars, tons of keyboards – the type of keyboards and synths that are such obvious elements in the sound of the song that they’re not worn out pop cliches – and unparallel rhythm. The beat is literally pulsating on each song, urging you to crank it up and dance. Jimmy Urine’s vocals aren’t as rapped filled as everyone claims they are on their older material but the mass amount of effects and distortion on his pipes in certain areas does successfully convey that famed sporadicness that they’re known for. It’s somehow a merger of that dreaded dance music that they belt out constantly at dance clubs with a type of raw punk energy with Urine unabashedly singing immature and shockingly funny lyrics. “I wanna make some babies / I wanna get it on / I wanna make you horny / But I can’t get it up / I wanna make some money / But I don’t want no job / I wanna make you horny / But I can’t get it up” and “It’s 3 a.m. – she won’t put out / Lets go make out with her friends” don’t get any props for ambiguity but stick out nonetheless and somehow gets you singing along without shame.

In fact every song in the first half of the record, starting straight from Never Wanted To Dance right up to Get It Up, left me in awe and sadness over the fact that I didn’t picture this chaotic mess of energy live. Dark, sporadic, and disjointed Mindless Self Indulgence was unlike anything I’ve heard before as it was something so absurd it just worked.

So what happens next is probably even more surprising as the latter half of the album is oddly disappointing. It just seems all too complacent. Once it passes the cheerleader introduction of Revenge, if fails to grab my attention right until the album closer and emo-bashing track Mark David Chapman. The songs still maintain that same sense of chaotic nature but it seems to have lost its edge. A few moments here and there (Mastermind for instance) are able to survive but for the most part they fall into the background. It seems repetitive as if they’ve lost the ambition to be shockingly absurd and without that they’ve lost their hook and start sounding like a mix between music at a dance club, Zebrahead and Linkin Park‘s older stuff.

Still, I could imagine it would have been one hell of a live show; I guess I’ll have to go next time…