by
Chaos of the Heart
Description
Reviews
Tracks
Notes
Free!
(EXIsTmusic #1, Winter 2002)
note to readers: One Mind was previously titled Avoid the Obvious
"It's easy to see why Chaos of the Heart chose the title Avoid the Obvious for their newest album. It's purposefully all over the musical map. Avoid the Obvious is sometimes prog-metal, sometimes acoustic, sometimes noise rock, but all around unfocused.
There are a few things Chaos of the Heart does real well in this multi-genre, twisted jaunt. "Hero Lost" is a powerful piece of music that is Mogwai-sounding in its brooding chords and angryman sound clips. "Thu a Darkened Blur," is a multi-layered guitar piece, and the duo does a nice job of taking a piece of music, a finite chord structure, following it for a while, but then meandering off into other directions, yet still retaining a focus. It's chaotic, but it's a coordinated mess. "Dreamworld" is a great attempt at post grunge space-rock, a la Aspera Ad Astra, but a rather poor choice to end the CD as it's the only time some semblance of space-rock appears on the album.
Avoid the Obvious tends to get on a bit of a high horse at times, with the music sounding forcibly tense. The whole thing is reminiscent of a public access horror movie, and this album is the sound track. It's in the ominous synth keys that you get this dark sense that the music is leading to something mind-boggling scary, but the payoff never comes. The music, like any amateur camcorder horror flick, has many ideas but lacks a good director to plan the shots and put it all together cohesively. Every once in a while you get a flash of brilliance and you just want to say, "Hey, Go with that!" but the band usually goes off in another direction.
You wouldn't bake a chocolate cake and top it off with potato frosting, just because you like potatoes and chocolate. It's in careful sequencing and probably sacrificing a few songs that Chaos of the Heart could take this album to a higher plane."
-- Adam Crepeau, Northeast Performer August 2002
- melodic fantasy
- everyonesmadhere
- reconciliation
- latchkey kid
- the light
- thru a darkened blur
- and at the end of the night...
- october mourning
- sleep
- august
- frail
- the melt of my imagination
- hero lost
- dreamworld
All Sounds Recorded by Chris Fortin
except tracks 12-14 Recorded by Jim Fogarty
Chaos of the Heart is:
Chris Fortin
and Justin Davis.