Static Thought – The Motive for Movement

Well, as far as compilations go, The Motive For Movement is, unfortunately, even markedly lamer than the last Give Em The Boot record, and that’s saying something.

Wait, what? This isn’t a comp? Seriously? This is one band? Bullshit. No way.

Really? Okay.

Well, let me start over then.

The Motive For Movement is the most fractured, all-over-the-map album I’ve listened to in a long time, and yet for all of it’s strained genre-hopping, it remains pretty goddamned tepid and uneventful throughout.

First there’s the fact that this is one of those sweet Hellcat “just send the reviewer lackeys the shit in a cardboard sleeve with no info whatsoever” packages with no lyrics, liner notes or anything else. Secondly – and this is after repeated listens over a decent span of time – the band itself still seems so confused as to the type of music they even want to fucking play. There’s no hooks, no real direction, even the production quality seems to jump around, as if the album was recorded during different sessions and not mastered very well. Which, for all I know, could be the case; again, since there’s no information included, I couldn’t say for sure.

There are brief moments of reggae (“3rd World”), decent singalongs scattered here and there (the chorus on “Vindication” is actually more than decent), the Tesla-like classical noodlings (complete with strings!) on “Conquest Of Saints”, and the really strong streetpunk of “Ambivalence.” I mean, if they’d managed an album – or even three or four more songs – roughly in the same vein as that one, I’d feel like I could get some sort of a handle on this album. Unfortunately, Static Thought chose to fill the rest of the record with so much lukewarm punk that’s remarkably void of feeling or intent, the songs becomes nearly impossible to classify or even remember once the song’s over. It’s just, uh, punk-sounding music. Boring punk-sounding music.

Judging for the song titles and what lyrics are decipherable, it seems like Static Thought at least have a reasonable head on their shoulders. And the vocalist can belt out his lines pretty decently. Yet again, the lack of lyrics don’t help, nor does the fact that the music he’s singing over is so resoundingly weak.