The Great Unraveling

(Kill Rock Stars)
by Lex Marburger

From the bowels of Baltimore comes some of the better, and more twisted, post-whatever scene that sprung out of D.C. and Fugazi over a decade ago and has been slowly chugging along ever since. What I’m trying to say is The Great Unraveling has a sound made to bend spoons without touching them, the sound of a man whose house burned down during a punk rock show, so he sifted through the ashes for what was important, put it on his moped, and took off to fairer lands. The Great Unraveling is centered around repetition, bizarre passages that loop endlessly, the phrases shifting slightly through each cycle as the guitar, deftly wielded by Tonie Joy (ahem, “Anthony R. Joy” to be exact), bends strings to the point of breaking and then eases them down again, forging against the silence like a young viking.

The lyrics are short, minimal, and are used like lava, building a phrase up out of nothing, repeating it, squeezing every bit of meaning out of it, and reflecting the music, which also builds an aura of meaning around it, like moss around an icon of sound. A sample of some words: “History that’s been created/ Is on a warped trajectory/ The past is now a parts vehicle/ The present is restoration feasible/ Which system is first, which diagnosis clear?” Do I know what that means? Of course not. But it seems to be following some universal order, with armageddon not too far behind. The song those lyrics were taken from, “New Frontier,” is the last, and longest, track on the CD. It becomes the epitome of The Great Unraveling ,a single line repeated for over ten minutes, Tonie’s guitar wrenching new and beautiful patterns out of a (supposedly) familiar phrase, the song growing in intensity until your brain begins to split at the seams. All of this was captured on tape by Steve Albini and Fluss, who is Steve’s cat. Fluss did an excellent mixing job, too. The Great Unraveling is a loud, creative, trance-core freak out. ‘Nuff said.