dig

defenders of the universe

‘After a three year time span since their self titled debut, Dig rnis back with their sophomore release, Defenders of the Universe.  This twelve track album has been the first the first sign of life from the band since then, with the exception of their contribution to the Saturday Morning album.  This was three years that were very well spent.

Obviously, half of the band was putting more of an effort in rnfor this album than the rest of the band.  There core of these tracks are up to par or even better in comparison to rntheir last album, but it seems like the band lost it after that. The lead licks and solos were way too over produced with and “studio magic” to add anything but a high quality annoyance to the songs.  Well, at least this fit in perfectly with the vocals. Lead vocalist, Scott Hackwith, traded in his coarse voice for a high-pitched, unpolished, Billy Corgan live type voice… not even to mention the lyrics.  It seems like Hackwith made it rnup as hewent along, five minutes before recording them.  It seems like he randomly chose words that rhymed or fit a singing pattern for half of the songs.  On the other half, he wrote about his drugs of choice.

Dig, dig, was more of an album recorded for the music.  There rnwas not much studio production involved at all.  It was a rather rnstraightforward album that is still very well worth listening to.  The band clicked together on every track of this project and thereis a wide array of music on it to listen to.  Defenders of the Universe was produced because it could afford to be.  It is more of an experiment than an album in comparison to the last one.  The only two songs even remotely worth listening to on this rnalbum are “Wall Socket” and “Opus”.  This is because the band laid back on the effects and filling every space with any lyrics possible.  They let the music shine through because they respected the songs.  Hopefully, the band will learn from their mistakes for their next release.  Otherwise, these guys should have just given up after their cover of the “Fat Albert” rntheme song for the Saturday Morning cartoon album.