“Pulse” is one of the most wonderful and exciting records I had the pleasure to listen this year and I admit it, it was a huge surprise. Tommy Giles Rogers Jr. is the lead singer and founder of the band Between the Buried and Me, one of the leaders of the new – twisted – metal wave, a powerful and extremely creative band wich show a new direction and proved once again: metal is not dead.
“Pulse” is actually the second solo album by Tommy, the first was released back in 2004 under the name Giles. The new material is extremely colorful, impossible to label, crammed in some particular box. And about the influences and different musical roots of Tommy we can get an idea by listening the cover collection released in 2006 under the title “The Anatomy of” by Between the Buried and Me where we have songs by Metallica, Sepultura, Depeche Mode , Queen, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Earth Crises, Blind Melon, Counting Crows, Soundgarden, Faith No More, Motley Crue, Pantera, and Smashing Pumpkins.
“Pulse” is quit polyphonic, multi-dimensional. Reminded me of the early Ian Brown’s solo albums (ex-The Stone Roses), the searches of Thom Yorke’s (Radiohead) on his solo album, but the sound palette covers a much wider area, it’s a colorful and intense trip between Muse, Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie and King Crimson. However – “Pulse” is unlike anything. It’s magic and wonderful.
11 songs, about 45 minutes,powerful tones, different approaches, all pervaded by a pulsating voltage, overlapping phases of some sort of contorted search, refreshing acoustic and electronic elements, a live stream of fractured noises and quiet moments. “Reverb Island has flavors Muse is a vibrant mix of acoustic guitar lines with a percussive layer of synthesizers,” Catch & Release” has Industrial tones,” Hamilton Anxiety Scale” is based on a theme that is waving between jazz, rock and industrial phase, “Scared” is “just” a nice song with acoustic guitar or “Reject Falicon” is an experiment with spices of psychedelic and space rock tones and constructions, while “Doctor” explode violently back to twisted industrial sounds. And piece by piece, moment by moment, Tommy surprise, is an album that flows seamlessly, had his own life.
“Pulse” is what I call music with capital “M”. Awesome!
Thomas Giles – on MySpace
Metal Blade Records
