Today is the Day
Temple of the Moving Star (Relapse)
by Doug Sery
In what I’m fairly certain is going to be a voice that’s going to grow louder and louder in these reviews until I have to go out a buy a pair of those squishy yellow ear plugs that you roll between your fingers and stuff in your ears, where I’m certain they’ll get sucked into my brain and clog an especially vital flow of blood causing a slow and extraordinarily painful death, I’m going to repeat myself by saying that it pisses me off to no end when I hear a band for the first time live in concert, am convinced that they are the best thing since Pike Brewery’s Old Bawdy #2, and when I actually get a copy of their CD, feel like I just knocked back a can of Coors Light. This, essentially, is the case with Today is the Day‘s newest CD, Temple of the Morning Sun.
Due to my chronic isolationism, I’d never even heard of Today is the Day until I managed to overcome my fear of being glued to the floor of Cambridge’s premier new music night club (or something like that) The Middle East, because New York’s favorite sons Unsane were headlining a show with Today is the Day and two other bands that I’d never heard of. Anyway, I mistakenly showed up early enough to catch the first two acts and was weighing in my mind whether or not it might just be better to stick a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger rather than suffer through another dose of testosterone, when my eye was caught by some shaggy-looking freak lugging a Kurzweil synthesizer onto the stage. I put the gun away and decided to bide my time (I’d seen Kundun the night before and was still bathing in its beatitude). Five minutes later, Steve Austin (guitars, vocals, samples), Mike Hyde (drums), and Chris Resser (synthesizer) blew the top of my head off (something which could probably have been as easily accomplished with the gun, but suicide’s illegal, y’know). From the moment the first sample began, TITD sawed the audience in half with a blend of overdriven guitar, creative sampling, and drumming that would have sounded appropriate on Led Zeppelin’s Moby Dick. Austin’s fellation of the microphone kept time with the music and I was almost certain that he was either going to suffocate on that thing or die from electrocution. The point of all this is that I came out of the show raving about what a great band Today is the Day is and why the fuck hadn’t I heard of them earlier (it was quickly pointed out that I never left my apartment and needed to get out more often).
It came as an almost perfect validation of Jung’s theory of synchronicity, then, when I was presented with the opportunity to review TITD’s new CD. Clutching the brand new disc in my clammy little paws, I scampered home to wallow in its sonic distortion. And this is where the disappointment sets in. Still buzzing from the energy of their live show, I ground to a screeching halt when the first and title track, “Temple of the Morning Star,” treacled out of my speakers. I like acoustic guitar. There’s one lying on my bedroom floor. It’s a nice guitar. It has a nice sound. It’s not mine. But when I’m bracing myself for the shock of noise like I’d experienced at their show, I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed by something that might as well have been done by Trent Reznor. The Nine Inch Nails bit continued on into the next song, “The Man Who Loves to Hurt Himself,” albeit with a cool Johnny Cash sample, then it quickly began to sound like Jesus Lizard, who, unlike NIN, I enjoy. This vein pretty much continued for the next few songs (although “Miracle” sounds like an annoying heavy metal cliché), until “Kill Yourself,” when I began to realize that Today is the Day has really stupid lyrics. I tried to block them out, I swear, but the last part of the song sounded like Rush and the instant rush (oops) of nausea I experienced broke my concentration and I reluctantly confirmed my fears by looking at the lyric sheet they’d unfortunately provided. “Watch me destroy you/get out my path/I fucked your wife/ Fucked her in the ass/She loved it/She sucks me/ That’s really funny/Suck me you fucker/I hate you.” That’s odd, Steve didn’t look like he was 13 years old at the show. Must be the cigarettes.
Pouring myself a cup of coffee, I sighed and returned to the CD. Now that the bubble had burst, I was able to listen to the CD with a more objective eye. Today is the Day is a rock band with aspirations of edginess. Some of the 18 songs on Temple of the Morning Star show glimmers of their live show. “Satan’s Alive” foregoes lyrics for the sake of an insinuating, almost jazz-as-noise soundtrack to what I think is the dialogue from one of the Hammer films from the ’60s. “Rabid Lassie” also eschews lyrics (well, the words ‘rabid lassie’ do break out now and again), in favor of a hypnotic stream of noise, that syncopates nicely into the Middle Eastern sound of “Friend for Life.” There seems to be a link between the absence of lyrics in their songs and my enjoying the songs, which reminds me of a review of their second album,Willpower, which I read in Bullet Train, “Yell and scream and moan all you want, just cut the crap narrative.” I’ll second that demotion. Lose the tortured rock musician as artist crap and the pretensions. This is a great band live and one which I’d gladly risk an embolism for. The CD? I think I’ll feed it to the ravenous little gray mouse that lives under my door.
