REVIEW: Curl Up and Die - The One Above All, The End Of All That Is

The album features a song Tom Cruise could really get behind ... and other tales of Curl Up and Die

Featuring the timber-shaking tune "Antidepressants Are Depressing," this album's release date, was pushed forward due to the controversy surrounding Tom Cruise.

What? It wasn't at all? I'm making shit up? The band would be offended at my spoiling a review of their album with any mention of Tom "quadricep" Cruise?

Darn.

So the album it is then.
Band: Curl Up and Die. Album: The One Above All, The End Of All That Is

Out of the gate like WWE wrestler Mankind (Is that a better celeb reference? What no celebs at all or the band members will come over and stomp on me hard? Um, OK) is "An Uncomfortable Routine."

There's a jangling - albeit fast - guitar backing up the scream-sung vocals on AUR. The same sound flashes up throught the rest of the album as well, dominated and blackened by Matt Fuchs crushtifying six-string shredding.

As well as they try to hide it in the music, there's some real wordbound poetry here - as can be read inside:

I stick to my sheets like failed reproduction
Soaking up on slowing down and the only thing
worse than being alone is when I'm not alone
I am in love with what I've lost
I do not want what I have got

"Antidepressants ..." Cruises in next, with 34 words of stress (relief): "...Our hearts are over-medicated / An overdosed America / Sharing a closet with our skeletons ..."

The rest of the album is just, dare we say it, a lot of fun, with Ryan Hartery, bass, Mike Minnick, vocals and Jesse Fitts, drums tearing it up.

"Instrumental" seeks some serious melody of the three instruments with Minnick crashing over the top in time - rhythmic, like a good crowd surfer. The next track up, "Blackout" has the same pattern, with a Led Zeppelin, metal-heyday feel for the first minute, 15 of just muted, quietly building instruments that continue underneath Minnick's toil. Rather than the growling singer pushing the song, the instruments are clearly the driving force here.

Article Author: Temple Stark

A graphic designing wordsmith, with a decade-plus career in community journalism behind me. Take a mean photo, have a new camera, and have been riding the wave of Twitter for more than a year.

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