Review: Lou Kelly – Never Was

Genres: avant-garde metal, prog metal, prog sludge metal (all the vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Between the Buried and Me, Mr. Bungle, Strapping Young Lad
Country: California, United States
Release date: 3 March 2024

The Velvet Underground: one of those critically acclaimed music nerd bands I can’t dig no matter how much I try. The same goes for frontman Lou Reed’s solo work—from the unilaterally awful glam rock of Transformer to one of the seminal harsh noise albums Metal Machine Music to goddamn Lulu, he’s just absolutely the antimatter to my taste. Considering he died in 2013, I was surprised to see an album like this come out, but I suppose taking advantage of dead people via posthumous releases is in the spirit of American capitalism… [Editor whispers] Wait, what? This is Lou Kelly? Vocalist of The World Is Quiet Here? For Christ’s sake, I might’ve preferred Lou Reed.

To provide a playground to do his vocal acrobatics over, Lou Kelly uses some unconventional riffs, often focusing on a rolling, locomotive bassline that’s more interesting than the Between the Buried and Me worship of tWIQH. The riffs are fraught and perverted with their inversion of guitar and bass, a manic cacophony that starts in “Drain My Soul” and rarely lets up until the end of “Welcome Home.” The guitars aren’t absent, though, and tracks like “Cadavers” with its cute interacting guitar lines and the ripping solos in “Hollow Memories” and “Ballad of Filth” are highlights of Never Was at large. With as much energy as me after my third cup of joe, the instrumentals constantly force Never Was forward—“Ancient Adolescents” in particular does something interesting as the track intermittently switches from wacky, punishing Strapping Young Lad sections to a downright strange choral bit and even into doom metal territory. Most of the tracks follow similarly, but usually Kelly keeps the whole deal fresh with pace changes and especially his varied vocal techniques.

Lou Kelly is an extraordinarily talented vocalist, able to contort his voice far beyond the capacities of even other gifted singers; however, on Never Was, the writing and performance often feels more like showing off a large range than trying to write successfully integrated vocal parts. “Drain My Soul” opens with insanely deep vocal fry, but it sounds like field recordings of a frog more than prog metal; “Hollow Memories” has him “covering” his clean vocals, and the technique makes him sound a bit like Kermit the Frog; and the worst offender “Mother Knows Best” switches to morose clean vocals that not only sound strange but also regale supremely cringy lyrics. He’s theatrical and talented, but far too indulgent. Moreover, occasionally he switches timbre in such a way it sounds like he’s singing with a mouthful of marbles or perhaps a single golf ball in each cheek. He does cool things, too, like in “Cutters” when he switches from the stupid-low vocal fry into a high shriek in one move, but overall Never Was suffers from Lou Kelly’s undisciplined talent, turning into theatrical vocal onanism, over-the-top with disregards to the flow of the songs.  

The strange vocals do benefit from the wacky part-Devy, part-sludge riffing (which also turns slightly into an Alice in Chains song in “Scum”). But while the instrumentals and vocals fit each other, they’re not produced well enough to mesh; indeed, the bass’s loudness sounds crisp in instrumental sections, but it melts in with Kelly’s lower vocals, making every section with extensive vocalizations muffled, ironic considering the focus of the album is Kelly’s various vocals. 

The World Is Quiet Here is the single most divisive album in Subway history—in large part due to Kelly’s vocals—and I admit I was a bit agnostic about the whole thing. Kelly’s solo riffs impress me more than in his main band, but the vocals continue to disappoint me despite their technically thrilling nature, and so I’m left still feeling neutral about his solo work, too. It’s cool how he can range the gamut from Devin Townsend to Andy Schmidt (Disillusion) to Christian Vander’s (Magma) more avant-vocal based solo work, but Never Was just doesn’t do anything for me, the positive aspects almost perfectly correlated with the negative. All I can confidently assert is that Lou Kelly trumps Lou Reed any day.

Recommended tracks: Ancient Adolescents, Cadavers, Scum
You may also like: Christian Vander, The Lion’s Daughter, The World Is Quiet Here
Final verdict: 5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: independent

Lou Kelly is:
– Lou Kelly (everything)