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Rootwater: Visionism
23/03/10 || Trauma
“naaa na na no
ma ma
yesh no no
oh no”
That is seriously what a few verses of “Venture” sounded like to me on the first listen. I laughed my ass off. I was severely regretting grabbing this album to review at that point, having just sat through yet another useless intro track and into some kinda mix of rap/growl/yell/dubbed vocal lines that I couldn’t quite decipher immediately… all done by a band named Rootwater. Whatever the fuck that is.
Thankfully, there is a lot more to what’s going on here than a group of Polish musicians butchering the English language making pseudo heavy music. They don’t really butcher the language, actually quite decent at singing in the tongue. As well, it’s not pseudo heavy, it is heavy. Understand, all the same, that this is not metal for people purely into death metal. Have you heard System of a Down? Ok, so you think they made some decent shit in their careers, yes? Well, I didn’t like them at all. Rootwater, though, is quite okay by my ever-changing standards of what is good and what is shit, and in all honesty don’t sound anything like System… but I guess the music media is King of Fact(ual fallacy).
I have tested this full-proof system for listening to and reviewing new music, on this album specifically. You see, I imagine that it is the best shit ever, i.e. a 10 score, and I am about to be blown away. Intro tracks are an automatic bump down 1 whole score point. Annoying vocals are -2 points, and boring songwriting is another -2 points. Once it hits that 5 threshold, the littlest things can impact the score greatly, and there is always freedom to interpret the penalty for other annoyances once outside of the first 4-5 points. The only exception to my system is stoner drone, which starts at a 1 no matter what, and it has to be really inventive to even get the score to a 2.
Rootwater began its life at a 9, all primed to be a stand-out for my year. Once I got past my juvenile laughter at “Venture” things were going well, especially when it gets to it’s chorus. It is amazingly catchy and you get the urge to sing along a bit. “Living in the cage”, “Closer”, and “Frozenthal” passed my ears with not one complaint. It wasn’t brutal death metal, sure, but I can open my fucken ears sometimes and appreciated a different style. These guys mix some very different sounds in their sonic assault — I think I heard some kind of ethnic instrument, like a mijwiz or something, in “Frozenthal” among other sounds — and that stretches into vocal styles. So far it had been varied and pretty interesting to listen, with a little Mike Patton-esque passage in “Venture”. “Freedom” put a damper on my feelings towards the music. Not necessarily a bad tune, being 38 seconds long, but it had this god-awful production and sounded like shit compared to the previous and later tune. I proceeded with caution. I was then greeted with someone sounding like this:
“ba la le lo mo la
ma loog ah my noogie
ba la le lo mo la”
More chanting in some gibberish that is probably English, followed by some female tribal chanting. I decided that these guys are Sepultura, Soulfly, and System of a Down all mixed into one (take a wild guess at how I came up with that), only good. The chanting is kinda catchy and not an ear-sore (har har), but still, what the fuck are you chanting? I don’t want to have to look for lyrics, you know.
Pootwater. Hahaha. Kinda like farting water, no? I’m running out of things to say about this band, eloquence with words is something I try to avoid. It sure doesn’t suck, and it’s a step up from good. You get lots of weird shit like “Follow the spirit” but it works to kinda juxtapose the heaviness that precedes and follows. That also means that this album never really becomes boring, because you’re always going to be greeted with some kind of weird chant or chorus. I forget what the hell I was marking off the points for this bitch, so let’s scrap my system since a small number of albums are a fucken 10 and it’s ludicrous to think so beforehand. Regardless, minus one point for the intro track, and minus 1/2 a point for “Freedom”.
P.S. Current Vader drummer Paweł Jaroszewicz was a member of this band in 2008. Rootwater also did a track for the bonus CD for “The Witcher”, the video game. I love that game. Yes, it is important info.
- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Mystic Records
- Website: http://rootwater.pl
- Band
- Maciej Taff: vocals
- Sebastian Zusin: guitar
- Marcin “Valeo” Walenczykowski: guitar
- Filip “Heinrich” Hałucha: bass
- Grzegorz “Oleynik” Olejnik: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. (Useless) Intro
- 02. Venture
- 03. Living in the cage (with my gimp suit on)
- 04. Closer
- 05. Frozenthal (the grim and frostbitten jew)
- 06. Freedom
- 07. Timeless
- 08. Realize
- 09. Follow the spirit
- 10. Alive
- 11. The ministry
- 12. Steiner
- 13. Under the mask (my breath stinks)
- 14. Visionism
- 15. Haydamaka (bonus track)
