Nobody could accuse this indie rock band from Phoenix, Arizona of lack of confidence or a paucity of ambition. The Apneist is their debut album and mainly the brainchild of bassist and vocalist Jim Keenan . It is an ambitious project which has snowballed from a humble set of ten tunes with a common thread into a multimedia avalanche.
Aside from the record there is a lavishly illustrated 28 page booklet, a graphic comic, a DVD and a forthcoming novel by Arizona author Josh Isaac.
They just need to get James Cameron on board and the world's their oyster!
Here is how the band introduce the concept: "This is the story of the rise and fall of Jon Tate, the man responsible for the end of the world. As he sank to his doom his life started to flash before his eyes, revealing the path that led him to that point.... Each song on this album represents a flashback"
Tate is a boy genius in a future world besieged by a never ending war whose precocious talents are turned to creating an Angel Army of robots to rid the world of deadly weaponry forever. Needless to say this plan backfires with disastrous consequences for him and the planet.
Within this dystopian tale we encounter doomed romance, ruthless megalomania, desperate power struggles and thwarted ambition ; in other words, it is like a Shakespearan drama with technology.
Musically it's a very mixed bag of Screamo, Indie and Prog-Rock and one major drawback for the lay listener is that none of the story behind the album would be clear without the accompanying booklet and full lyric sheet. Most of the words are indecipherable and none of the songs have any conventional choruses or memorable hooks.
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Reading the words shows that you're not missing any great any poetic insights. Take for example these turgid lines from Text Support: "there's a computer on your shoulders / so wrap those teeth with this tongue /take control, rough me up".
A further weakness is that it is so plot driven that there is never any sense of emotional weight to add substance to the one dimensional characters. For example, the villains of the piece are described as "fat generals smoking their cigars, cackling maniacally" which hardly scores points for originality.
The most obvious comparison to this project is the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and many tracks have a similar dreamy , psychedelic feel without ever matching the Philadelphia band's pop sensibility and charm.
A concept as grandiose as this needs at least one or two memorable songs if it is to succeed but nothing here makes that kind of impact.
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