Style: post (clean vocals)
Review by: Josh
Country: US-MI
Release date: 27 August, 2021
Hit-or-miss albums are always challenging. In a way they’re harder listens than completely middling ones, as there’s that lingering thought of “but what if?” left behind. On the other hand, though, that potential is not completely lost, left to perhaps be realized at some point down the line. This doesn’t happen with fully mid albums; at least you know what you’re getting there. Let’s see what side of the tracks Tiny Tree falls on.
The guitar work is easily the high point of XI. The tone is excellent overall, and the riffs are fantastic at creating that repetitive kind of vibe that good post-metal songs are capable of just riding out to. A lot of the better tracks remind me of if The Bees Made Honey In the Lion’s Skull-era Earth decided to flirt with more conventional song structures and cranked up the distortion. The guitars completely make the crescendos of the album as well – in post-metal fashion, many tracks spend their whole runtime building up a single idea and then peaking it towards the end, and the riffs at the climax never miss. I’d go as far as to say that a good deal of tracks on here are hard-carried by the guitar work.
For a song to be hard-carried, though, everything else in it has to be weaker by comparison, and unfortunately that’s exactly the case for the rest of the performances on this album. The vocals and the bass aren’t bad, but aren’t exactly killing it either. The drumming, however, is clearly the worst part of this release by a country mile. The snare drum on this album in particular is horrendous. In harsh contrast to the polished guitar tone, this is almost St. Anger-tier bad, saved only by the fact that it sort of actually sounds like a drum and not a trash can. Nothing else on the kit sounds particularly good, either. I would’ve guessed that the band threw together some low-quality programmed drums for this release, but at the same time programmed drums don’t go off-beat. That’s the other major flaw with the drumming on this release – sometimes the drum track is straight-up out of time with everyone else. Take Idle Eyes for example, a track that by all accounts should have a fantastic climax but misses completely at doing so because of how ridiculously far from being in the pocket the kick drum is. This isn’t remotely the only song like this, too. I hate to overly bash someone’s performance, but the drumming on this is just unfortunate for a release that had the potential to be so much better.
This album isn’t ruined by the drum performance, but it’s frustrating to imagine what it would’ve been like if they just got someone else to do it. Eventually it stops being as distracting as it is at first, though. I wouldn’t call this a bad album, and if you’re a fan of the less sludgy side of post-metal this is worth at least checking out, but I can’t say I see myself coming back to it. If they step up their game on the next one, though? Sign me the hell up.
Recommended tracks: Idle Eyes (you’re just gonna have to get used to the drums), December, Misinformation Effect
Recommended for fans of: If These Trees Could Talk, Tool, Earth (not the super drone-y stuff)
Final verdict: 5.5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | SoundCloud
Label: Independent
Tiny Tree is:
– Addison Eilers (guitars, vocals)
– Paul L. Jensen (drums, keys, samples)
– JD Pinkus (guest bassist on December)
0 Comments