As
metal
practitioners go, unless you start invoking names like
GWAR
, it doesn't get much more over the top than
Strapping Young Lad
. On
The New Black
, chief skull-denter
Devin Townsend
and company keep up the craziness, doing their best to bust through
stereotypes while doling out vicious, frenzied slabs of sonic extremism: once you've heard
"U Suck,"
a straight-up assault complete with demon screams and instrumental chaos on someone who sucks, and royally, there can be no mistaking
SYL
's commitment to rage as an art form. But as it proved on 2005's
Alien
, this is a quartet capable of heaving its heaviness in fresh directions. Though the bulk of the vocals are given over to predictably menacing growls and banshee screams, snippets of actual singing -- some of it positively
Bon Jovi
-like -- surface on
"Decimator,"
"Far Beyond Metal,"
and
"Almost Again,"
and the hypnotic, disc-stealing
"Fucker"
features a moment of female screech-singing that's as well-timed as it is surprising. It's the genre-weaving that makes the strongest case for
's excellence within its frenzied field, though.
"Antiproduct,"
a message song that keeps the curve balls coming, threads a jazzy passage through the punishing stuff, and
"Wrong Side"
's stops and starts jerk loyal listeners around with
System of a Down
-like fits of melodicism. All this, and a classic edge, too: while
continue to spread their wings and explore
's creaking, shrieking boundaries, there are times when
's sound seems not new at all but filched from the '70s --
Bruce Dickinson
might be proud. ~ Tammy La Gorce