"we became
snakes" review
end times (1986)
Continuing the slow poison of the
S.T. canon, with the free-jazz-armed-with -a-hot-knife guitar blisterings of
Baiza still the sharp point. Some explicitly bop tones have been added now,
to great effect in my book, it's like seeing the Miles Davis Quintet (w/
Coltrane) grow a couple extra heads and emerge as a seventy foot monster
with a big boot aimed at crushing your puny skull. Brewer's lyric-reading
is still his most prominant means of attack, but his actual singing on "The
Need" shows he could and should control a wider and more compelling dynamic
and tonal range. Thing is, the band's bop density is collapsing
progressively more tightly around even the flat Brewer declarations, and
damned if they don't mesh lke hedge clipper blades more often than not,
making this S.T. yet another potent pill that most pansies won't be able to
swallow.
