Score: 1/10
In 1994, Kurt Cobain committed suicide. Soon after, grunge packed away its flannel shirts, finished playing its last chord on a battered Fender Jaguar and left the building. However, the record-buying public is still experiencing the after effects of this Seattle scene. Much like the Chernobyl disaster, grunge left behind a legacy of poorly formed, mutated young musicians who thought that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was a cue for them to start writing their own versions of grunge classics. Hence, in the early 2000's, we had to witness the commercial success of groups like Puddle of Mudd, who made Fred Durst look like he was endowed with the charisma of a Beatle. Staind were such a joke that even Bowling for Soup had to take the piss, and let us not forget Courtney Love, whose car-crash of a life has been regularly documented for the past decade (for anyone who's interested, the coke fiend is currently dating the Boosh's Noel Fielding. Yes, really.) In fact, the only positive point of the grunge aftermath I can think of is Animal Collective's collection of Nirvana covers.
I'm sure by now you're wondering what this has to do with And This Army. Quintessentially, Brooklyn, NY's And This Army are a miserable re-hash of grunge ethics, with a hint of Isis just to be clever about it. Hesitations were bound to occur about the band's debut record, Foe, when the recording technique was explained by its producer as follows: "Recording was simple. Distort the piss out of everything and press record!" Not exactly a thoughtful approach, but of course, it would be ridiculously shallow of me to judge the band on their crude-tongued producer's words, so I gave the record a fair spin. It did not go down well. Foe is actually one of the worst things I have ever heard in my entire existence. Completely and utterly without direction, the release equates to the worst parts of, say, a poor man's pre-demo-jamming stages of Nirvana's Bleach. Then again, Bleach was released seventeen years before Foe existed, and wasn't filled with overly decadent, self-involved songs.
It's impossible to pick out any particular tracks that aren't as bad as all the others, because each song follows a basic pattern of heavily distorted guitar, with added feedback, which I imagine makes the group think they're being all arty and shoe-gaze-esque. They are not. The third tracks title, "Expiration", comes from the archaic term for death, and it seems And This Army are yet to realise that grunge really is dead. Honestly, I cannot understand the reasoning behind this trio's existence, and more importantly why they're allowed to release records, but I do hope they stop soon. Until then dear reader, find solace in Avey Tare and co. covering "Polly" and try your best to ignore grunge re-runs like this.
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