Just when I thought I had sublimated all those rock urges: crotch grabbing, big hair and bongtification, here comes a sharp, mean album that spins my head around, slapping it with a ball peen hammer on every rotation. Gently placing the fragments back together in my skull with krazy-gloo, I smirkingly think that it was bound to happen- and in fact, it already had.

Somewhere between the phat-beat of electro/d-n-b and 4/4 guitar stylings of mainstream rock, industrial leaked forward to fill the gap- some artists leaning toward the rock cult-of-personality in both their style and sound (Trent), others satisfied merely to distill beats to their rawest forms (MBM, Panacea), beautifully mean, pounding repetitive exercises. It seemed to fill the void, and everybody was happy. Well, I was, anyway, and that's what counts.

Then comes out Ultra Obscene, spanning some imagined void between the goth-industrial cultsters and the mean-beat DJ's, Roni Size's most recent project seems both groundbreaking and tired, venerable and boring. An enigma on a shiny compact disc. I scratch my chin and ponder this enigma. Hmmm.

Ultra Obscene combines edgy drum-n-bass production with the decidedly harsh nubian vocal stylings of Leonie Laws to form a hybrid entity that succeeds on some fronts, fails in others. Size's previous record, New Forms held its greatest fascination in the distinctive breakdowns and dynamic shifts in focus & intensity. In contrast, Ultra Obscene holds a shallow, frenetic pace from start to finish, and the lyric-driven songs, while intense, lack the interesting dynamics that made New Forms so interesting. Size, DJ Die and Laws have succeeded in creating a harsh, fast-moving, claustrophobic atmosphere, at the cost of listenability. Sure, Laws' delivery possesses the emphatic tone of any real rocker, totally appropriate for the lyrical content- which runs from the paranoid to the disturbing, but the beats get lost on most tracks, second fiddle to Laws' front-and-center vox.

It could be said that Ultra Obscene is trying to do too much. The beats act not as much a centerpiece to the songs, but a framework upon which to run up the Laws' flag. That's why I have the nagging, repetitive feeling that what I'm listening to is rock, it is clearly focused more on what is being said than how, preferring to repeat hooks over and over rather than break them down in supreme style, then build them back up again. It's not bad, don't get me wrong, but it is ultimately unfulfilling.

My verdict: Ultra Obscene is eminently disposable. While the album may bring to the mainstream a few ideas that haven't yet reached MTV, nothing on Ultra Obscene is terribly important, entertaining or lasting. Go with Meat Beat Manifesto instead.








Recommended: No