Defeater Lost Ground
2009; Bridge Nine
In a lot of
individual disciplines at the Olympics there’s a factor taken into account for
the degree of difficulty. Basically it’s a way to measure not just how well a
given athlete executed their dive/routine/whatever, but how hard it would be to
theoretically complete said act and to give a bit of an advantage to those who
may not have executed as well but who made the attempt at something above and
beyond what their neighbor did. It’s a nice way of equalizing the playing
field, letting people who have trained to do the more difficult disciplines
have an advantage but not without leaving room for an exceptionally
well-executed minor maneuver to ascend the ranks as well. It’s something that
I’d say we don’t necessarily do enough of in the realms of any sort of art
critique; we value quality above all else and can’t get past the fact that an
attempt at something greater can – and in my eyes should – be bolstered by virtue of its intentions, not enough to
overtake things that are simply better but enough to make sure that it doesn’t
get lost in the shuffle. I love bands that make that sort of attempt; even when
they stumble a bit in the process it’s compelling to witness in ways that rote
recordings along formula lines can never be.
Defeater
tried for something difficult here, so I’ll give them credit for that. Telling
the story of a black WWII veteran from his enlisting through to his sad end as
a homeless beggar in a scant 20 minutes is certainly a feat that I’d bet few of
their peers would even attempt at, and doing it as a hardcore punk act makes
the endeavor all the more impressive thanks to my general apathy towards the
genre. That Defeater actually manages to follow through with those
loftier-than-normal ambitions on Lost
Ground is worth celebrating. That’s not to say that they do the story
justice, it’s all broad strokes and generalities over actual depth, but given
the constraints they’re working within (by choice I might add) they definitely
do enough to get me on their side on a concept level at least. There are
definitely bands who have done worse with similar goals…well I can’t name any
off the top of my head but I’m sure they exist.
The issues I
have with Lost Ground go back to my
general apathy towards hardcore in its less post-ified forms. I don’t doubt
that Defeater are a good hardcore band at all, I can hear that they’ve got a
certain degree of variety to accompany their more straightforward style of
playing and that they know how to write some great material within their genre.
It’s the genre itself that I can’t really get into, so no matter how good the
take on it, and I will say that Defeater come a lot closer than many bands of
their ilk to getting me invested in their songs, there’s always a bit of a wall
between me as listener and the band as players. Like I said, I see how these
are good – occasionally maybe even great (“Beggin’ in Slums” particularly has
moments of genuine greatness that transcend my issues with the sound) – songs,
but they aren’t songs that do anything for me as a completely biased listener.
So taking the
degree of difficulty into account here, Lost
Ground definitely fares a bit better than it would if these were just 6
hardcore songs without the unifying theme and storytelling behind them. It
doesn’t make it a great album though, just a decently executed one whose
ambitions outdo its actual contents. The conceptual aspect is enough to give it
purchase without exactly making it a truly compelling listen is what I’m trying
to say here. I don’t feel cheated out of the time I spent listening to it, but
I doubt that I’ll really ever listen to it again either. [6.5]
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