London’s seizurecore mob Down I Go are back with This is Disastercore, a collection of songs that deal with topics possessing a collective death toll to rival even Commando. With their first album, This is Dinocore, they presented an interesting proposition – silly songs played seriously – and this is further developed here.
Musically, it’s very much the same territory. Complex time signatures colliding with riffs chunky enough to make your fillings rattle and some nicely throat-mangling vocals that would make a T-Rex reach for the Lockets are the order of the day here, but there are moments with the Mike Patton appreciation strays into the copycat. Obviously, the notion of copying someone as eclectic as Patton is something of an oxymoron, but the swirl of Lament of the Mournful Sailors and Sticky Nightmare’s sheer insanity could be Mr Bungle outtakes. It’s the truly insane and unpredictable songs like Stay At Home and Die and Gigantic! Titanic! (not to mention the brilliant hidden track) that should have comprised the majority of the album, rather than being marginalised.
The problem is that it’s hard to really take DiG all that seriously. Perhaps that’s the point of them, but Dinocore had more urgency about it because of all the rough edges and experimentation and Disastercore feels too much like a retreading with different lyrics. Concept albums are by no means a bad thing, but when a musical rendition of The Plague sounds like a Diplodocus you have to question what the point is. Dinocore set the bar so high in terms of fucking around with little regard for anyone listening that another album of similar material feels like a bit of a cheat – I wanted to be surprised and appalled and shocked at Disastercore, but just like when you’ve watched The Shining too many times and you know when the twin girls are going to appear, it somewhat lessens the effect.
It’s good, but I expected more. If, as they did with Dinocore, DiG can come up with some true originality then they’ll again be one of the most interesting bands playing heavy music around. But they’re cheating themselves by putting out more of the same, and as they’ve obviously so musically talented, they should set their sights World Trade Centre-high.