The debut album from Austria’s Cameran, A Caesarean, sounds like a high-energy spinoff of an aggressive minded Rage Against the Machine and a stripped down version of Tool done through a post-hardcore type mentality.
Cameran creates music that delicately hints at elements of prog but never fully delves into its noodling aspects. It’s music that tends to splinter into various directions and change course while ending somewhere completely different. This is a band that clearly understands the value of dynamics, motion shifts, tension swells and resolution and the power of the tempo change.
“The Forging of Battle Plan B” exemplifies this vision. The song begins with a Tool-like riff that eventually percolates into a sprawling straight ahead balls-out wall of noise. It’s this sense of unpredictability that demonstrates music free from constraint.
Cameran’s hard-driving rhythmic vision is their strength. Whether through the bundled hardcore energy on “The Listening Test,” and “Hideko”, or by the wide-open big-beat rock feel evidenced by the opener “The Zombie Walk,” the foursome show surprising complexity throughout.
They also offer fragile moments with the accordian driven instrumental “Headphone Music Op 001” and the gentle piano permutations on “Tu Es Monono?”
But despite these positive moments, Cameran suffers in the vocal department. Aaron Tauss (vocals, guitar) constantly reverts to a strained and pained one dimensional shout delivery that gets old quickly. This apparent over-reliance becomes draining which lessens the impact of their creative aspirations and greatly impacts repeated listens.
It’s too bad because musically A Caesarean is solid.
