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No Hawaii: Snake my charms

14/07/10 || Khlysty

It took me quite some time, but I finally nailed the bastid on the head. I finally found what really stops me from totally embracing No Hawaii. See, these Swedes site as major influences three of my favourite bands: Neurosis (HURRAAAAAH!!!), Tool (YAYYYYYYYY!!!) and The Mars Volta (OLEEEEEE!!!!), which means that at least their listening tastes are fine and dandy. So, whatever problem there might be, this will come from the application of these influences into No Hawaii’s original music, right? Well, yeah, but, see, even if you got the recipe down pat, the cooking process might prove to be less satisfactory and the final product less savoury than the ingredients used.

No Hawaii, to their credit, seem to understand perfectly what those bands they site as major influences aim for. So, they understand the universe-collapsing song dynamics that Neurosis have since time immemorial TMed. They understand the pretentious creativity that inundates almost all of Tool’s oeuvre. They understand the almost surrealistic approach of The Mars Volta towards trad rock forms. Also, the guys of No Hawaii seem to be quite accomplished musicians who can turn the above mentioned understandings into a coherent sound that, while paying tribute to the influencers, never seems derivative.

Of course, one might say that during the last few years there’s been an overabundance of bands following the NeurIsis trend and that another band added to a pretty big subset of metal might not be such a good idea. Me, so long as the band is capable of producing something interesting, I have no such problem. And No Hawaii’s music can be interesting. Which brings me to the problem that I mentioned above, that is, the reason why I cannot really enjoy this record. And the problem lies in the flow of each song and of the record as a whole. See, No Hawaii has yet to manage the transitions from “soft” parts to “heavy” parts to seem like natural song evolution.

The changes in dynamics are jarring and not in a good way; most of the time, these transitions seem like copy-paste parts with no regard towards flow and compositional logic. And, let’s be honest here, if you wanna write 7-to-10-minutes-long songs, you gotta make them really interesting and “organic” in their development. Also, at least a couple of times I caught myself thinking that the band’s cribbing notes from the QOTSA gospel (another favourite of mine) of hooky near-heavosity. It’s not bad, but it makes the influence mix all the more, ehm, mixed and shows, at least to me, a band unsure of its own voice. Plus, a couple of tracks seem totally useless in the context that the band wants to give to the record.

Bottom line is that No Hawaii gots to clean up their act. They gots to understand that complexity and dynamics do not always a good record make. They gots to understand that influences are as good as you allow them to be. In short, they gots to find their own voice. As I said before the subgenre is already near saturation and only the really good will survive.

Information
Released: 2010
Label: Parallel Music
Website: www.nohawaii.com
Band
Biggus: urdu
Smejks: profanity
Gonzo: español
Gurra: repetition
Mirico Reward: balls

Tracklist
01. A lovely breed
02. Chuck noir
03. Tunnel
04. (bank)
05. Isaul
06. Radio magellanes
07. Technical difficulties
08. Unleash the kuru
09. E=mc2 (kaospilot)

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