Kitchens and Bathrooms

Vehicles Beyond (2003)

Jesse Raub

I have to say, when I first saw this CD, I was skeptical. I mean, c'mon, the band name and CD title really aren't that great. When I put this in. I was blown away. Holy crap. These guys are face eaters. Get used to that term.

To describe them, I would have to say that they remind me of slower Q and Not U from "No Kill No Beep Beep." But better. The drumming is absolutely supurb, throwing out snycopated hits everywhere, knocking it out when it's hard, keeping it down when it's not, and generally, rocking my face at every chance (yes, face eating and face rocking are different). This band is based around the guitar, which generally ranges from haunting slow picking to slamming out the hardest power chords ever. There aren't a lot of vocals on this CD, but they range from whispering to ripping high, clear notes out of no where. There's a bit of shouting on this album, but it's all done musically. My only gripe is that the bass isn't as well developed as I'd like. It's got awesome lines at points, but I'd like to see more of it during every song.

The album starts out with a dark guitar riff on "First One In, Last One Out," and starts building from there. A vocal line comes in really high and clear, and from that the bass comes in low and the drums start rocking. Tempos and time signatures change, your mother loses her mind, it breaks down into pseudo-stop time, and repeats the cycle until you start to cry. In another great track, "Alphabet Conscious" in which a standard 4/4 verse comes out of nowhere and grabs you by the metaphoric balls. It's unexpected, it's amazing, and it made me wet myself. Still yet, my other favorite song, "The Woods," features a two and a half-minute build up until it bursts out into an insane hardcore riff. The best part is, it's an instrumental. That's right. These guys aren't afraid of cutting out the vocals. Finally, they have a song on the album that doesn't even have a title. It's not untitled, it's just blank. That's awesome.

I can't stress how much I really like this album. All the songs flow together really well, to the point of not really being able to distinguish one song from the next, even though there are no tie-ins from other songs on this entire album. Recomended to anyone who loves experimental rock music.