Search - Battle of Mice :: Day of Nights

Remember back when PJ Harvey sang for Isis?

The Dilettante | 11/02/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"No?



Ok, I admit, it never happened. But, if it had, this is what it would have sounded like.



No, actually, this is better. Too often, female vocals in intense heavy music sound awkward, forced, and out-of-place. They are easily overwhelmed by the music, and come off as gimmicky (i.e. "dude, get this: the singer is a CHICK!").



Not so with Julie Christmas. The musicians here tread the familiar ground between post-rock and sludge, but Christmas's vocal act is utterly new and unique. If anything, the music is the accompanyment to her act, a bizarre and original verbal/vocal performance that draws heavily on musical theatre, nursery rhyme and performance poetry. Soulful wailing is punctuated by harsh whispers and obscure spoken verse. Sometimes a lilting songbird (oddly not unlike Sarah Brightman), and others a shrieking maenad (think Diamanda Galas), she is endlessly interesting - and her lyrics compellingly cryptic.



There are also very, very dark thematic undercurrents here. Which gets at my other gripe with female singers in metal: they sound like they are faking "it" (i.e. the angst, the rage, and mental illness). They want to look cute in dreads and a bullet belt, but they are not really probing the depths of the existential abyss.



Julie is. I knew she was one sick puppy when I saw the cover of her other band's new album (just search "Made Out of Babies: Coward"), but the screaming 9-11 call at the end of track six on this record is just gratuitously sick and unnerving ("you have to tell me where you are Miss, so I can send help"). It simply goes too far. It is a symptom that something is wrong. (I am reminded of some of the samples on Supermachiner's "Rise of the Great Machine.")



But the bits like that sample give this brooding masterpiece its scary authenticity. She is compelled to go too far, and she can't help it. This nihilism here runs deeper than stretch jeans.



Of course, if I read that sort of stuff in a review like this, I would probably pass. When described, this doesn't SOUND like the sort of thing I'd be into. But I have still been playing the hell out of this record."

You can't overrate the vocalist

Matt Murray | 01/20/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"When I first blundered into this album, I was initially struck by how much the other reviews were focusing almost solely on the singer, as if no one else in the band had contributed anything worth mentioning. Well, that was before I had heard them; there weren't even any samples on this page at that point, and for reasons I can't recall or explain, I bought this totally unknown quantity anyway, and felt it climb straight into probably my top five favorite albums ever, which is something that almost never happens in one's late thirties. And I can attribute this almost solely to vocalist Julie Christmas, who really is as good as rumour has it.



Not since Mike Patton have I heard a singer with a more flexible voice and approach. Julie's singing ranges from smooth and controlled to hysterical screaming, from mature and womanly to disturbed little-girl squeaks, all organically and effortlessly. What she doesn't do is what most other female singers in metal do, i.e. either soprano-style operatics, or the sort of back-of-the-throat growling that sounds ridiculous and fake enough from male vocalists. While the actual instrumentation certainly contributes to the overall mood, the guitar lines themselves aren't inordinately complex; Isis is an apt enough comparison, though the music is often more ethereal and spacey than what Isis was doing at the time. Atop this, Julie lays out the most naked emotion I've ever heard from a singer. From the climbing hysteria of lines about "this dark red river down my drain," she plunges into a bitterly quiet "they all...fall...DOWN," that sounds like she was physically shuddering as she recorded it. Yet never in a million years would I term this album "emo" (as broad and often uselessly unhelpful as that term tends to be), as emo bands so often are characterized by whiny, self-pitying dreck, and nothing about Julie's delivery gives the impression that she wants or needs your sympathy, or really cares about what you think of her.



Much gets made about how disturbing this album is, but I'm most struck by how beautiful it is; "Wrapped in Plain" may be the most gorgeous song I've ever heard. At the same time, the band doesn't shy away from the uglier side of things: the notorious 911 call at the end of "At the Base of the Giant's Throat" features Julie screaming uncontrollably as someone seems to burst into the room and assault her, while the operator vainly attempts to acquire her address. The band has consistently refused to discuss its inclusion on the record in any way. It may well be simply a ploy to lend mystique to the proceedings (the call could easily have been staged) or to avoid legal hassles, though the thought that the call was neither staged nor a prank is rather unsettling. Julie and guitarist Josh Graham began the record as a couple and had an infamously toxic falling-out before it was finished, unfortunately leading to the band's eventual dissolution before a sophmore album could ever see the light of day.



I'm always wary of five-star reviews, almost as wary as I am of one-star reviews; they're almost never honest. Most things lie in the broad middle between perfect and worthless, but in the two-plus years I've owned this record, I've scarcely gone more than two weeks without listening to it, and gaps that long are rare. I can't think of a compelling reason to knock off even one star. It's just sad that this band, between this album and a split EP with Jesu, never recorded more than nine songs in their existence. I was hoping to be collecting Battle of Mice recordings for years to come."

Amazing, Interesting to listen to.......mmmmmmmm

metallife | Mankato MN USA | 03/13/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I love the red sparrows and I read about this album in revolver magazine because it was in like the top 10 albums of the year. So I bought it. Its F&^##kin amazing. The vocalist does some amazing, original things, which pretty much just seems like it flowed right out of her and she didn't put too much thought into it, and it turned out perfect. Some of the most emotionally heavy stuff I have listened to in awhile."