Uniform, a new Brooklyn duo composed of ex-The Men bassist Ben Greenberg and ex-Drunkdriver singer Michael Berdan, don’t joke around when it comes to their dreary worldview.
Perfect World is not meant as an optimistic title; it suggests the will to perfection choking the humanity out of the populace. The band name furthers that notion. World‘s cover, a sigil of a cross and death’s sickle, is imposing and cryptic. But appearances can be deceiving: The album’s six songs work within the limits of hardcore and industrial to create a monolithic record that slyly undermines its central thrust.
Let’s get the only criticism, a fairly minor one at that, out of the way — the opener and title track is far and away the best song. Who would think…
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…that a stark industrial song, with a rhythm ready to break down and self-destruct at any moment, would be a summer jam? Over a sharp and thin Ministry-like attack, Greenberg programs a drum track suggestive of a metal drummer stuck in a blast-beat fugue state. His guitar grows increasingly paranoid as the song progresses, and Berdan’s shrieks contribute to the tension, but “World” never loses its hook. Greenberg’s pop instincts he cultivated during his tenure in The Men shine through Berdan’s screeching voice and the brittle guitar. Thankfully, he’s returned those talents to heavy music, not settling for bar rock. The Men were best when they simultaneously rode the lines of making clubs feel like stadiums and punk as destructive freedom, and Uniform might be, spiritually, the closest thing we’ll get to their older works.
On “Buyer’s Remorse”, Uniform exhume ’80s hardcore. Hardcore as a genre has explored dystopia plenty, but Uniform bob and swing with an urgency as if the stage-divers, instead of flailing about in the disorganization of their own lives, are out to specifically target you. “Indifference” moves toward a dark dance atmosphere, where Greenberg shifts his programming from metal purgatory to militaristic bass and snare. Feedback gets corralled into moaning riffs. Occasionally the guitar reaches blissful heights, contrasting and mocking the hell below. Dance music’s utopian promise of one love and its undeniable undercurrent of sleaze all mix together, like Prurient’s Through the Window with guitar in the mix.
World‘s last two songs, “Lost Causes”, a collaboration with former Coil member Drew McDowall, and “Learning to Forget” are slower than the rest of the album, and would seem like Uniform’s letting you coast off anesthetized. Not quite: “Causes” submerges the band’s torment under unsettlingly pleasant drift, bringing Uniform’s themes of suppression to their logical conclusion. Greenberg’s guitar comes back roaring in “Learning”, with Berdan, once the angry punk kid, rambling hushed and defeated. There’s no pulse, and signs of life have been stamped out. The last two songs demonstrate how the spirit dies long before the flesh.