I know what you’re thinking. Taproot? Yeah, those dudes are still together, and they’ve just dropped their second release for the notorious Victory Records. Outside of commercial rock nights where it’s ironically acceptable, Nu-Metal undeservedly gets something of a bad rap these days; many of the bands pigeonholed into the genre don’t get the recognition they deserve as songwriters. Unfortunately, Taproot isn’t a band you can say that about. Even at the height of their career with songs like ‘Poem’, they can be considered average at best. That’s not to say that there aren’t some gems in their (surprisingly) prolific career (2005’s ‘Blue-Sky Research’ contains some great tracks); but there is definitely a reason why they aren’t recognised up there with their mentors like Limp Bizkit as stalwarts of the genre.
Suitably titled ‘The Episodes’, Taproot’s latest offering is a concept album, with each of the ten tracks representing a different ‘episode’ of the story. What that story is, is anyone’s guess, because lyrically it’s lazy, clichéd and ambiguous. As far as concepts go, ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ this is not. Musically, most tracks on this album are pretty much more of the same from the band. It’s a record of medium tempo songs featuring fifth chords, palm muted breakdowns and nasal vocals, which makes for a repetitive listening experience. The songs are littered with formulaic samples that were even out-dated ten years ago; several songs feature enough robotic voices to make you think they might have actually employed a Speak & Spell as a second vocalist.
Nearly every song on ‘The Episodes’ comes in at over the four-minute mark, when they could have probably done the same thing at half the length. The opening track, ‘Good Morning’ starts with forty-odd seconds of atmospheric white noise before dropping a riff so fat that it’s a promising start to the record. It’s only when vocalist Stephen Richards launches into a ridiculously ungraceful scream that you realise what is coming.
The rest of the album meanders constantly between unambitious radio-friendly metal and schmaltzy ballads. Mid-album track ‘The Everlasting’ is unpalatable nonsense that wouldn’t look out of place on an album by a band like The Calling. For all its faults, ‘The Episodes’ does have a few highlights. On ‘Around The Bend’, Richards employs a slurred delivery in the vein of Chino Moreno, conveying more emotion in his quieter moments than any other song on the album.
Unfortunately, this album falls short of already low expectations on nearly every level. The song writing is inconsistent at best, with all of the most redeeming elements already being executed by other artists more successfully. It’s a sad fact that ‘The Everlasting’ will find it’s way to the bottom of the canon of an already derided genre of music.
CAMERON CLARKE