They’ve pissed fans off by being too heavy, too soft, too experimental, too alternative, too pop, too electronic and more. It focuses the band's exploratory qualities instead of reigning them in completely.Dredg has been accused of almost every musical crime any band in any genre can be accused of. The influences in Dredg's sound swirl thicker than ghosts above a cemetery. But "Hung Over on a Tuesday" offers just such a blend, and "Not That Simple" opens its chorus with a satisfying distortion crunch that's predictable, but nevertheless irresistible. ("I will wait all of this time above you/is that what you wanted?") And the album could've really used more of the band's rocking side, to balance the band's prodigious use of atmosphere. The wandering "Jamais Vu" sounds like a stoned Incubus, complete with undergraduate love letter lyrics. "Sang Real" features drum processing and treated piano, "Planting Seeds" has the tension/chorus release quality of contemporary Brit-pop, and "Spitshine" has one of the record's strongest melodies. And then the churning guitar intro of "Tanbark Is Hot Lava" drops, and you're bewildered again. The title track is a standout, as is "Zebraskin," which with its keyboards and silky beat could be Cousteau or Sweetback. Catch Without Arms looks to groups like Deftones and At the Drive-In, but there's also a tremendous capacity in Dredg for straightforward pop. It's not like in the blurry emo world, where string sections crash regularly into soliloquies and it usually just ends up as melodrama. The choruses emphasize the Bono/ Chino Moreno in Gavin Hayes' vocal, and when the rhythm drops out for a contemplative piano moment, nothing feels forced because this is what Dredg has been working toward for years. But openers "Ode to the Sun" and "Bug Eyes" focus the grandeur and meandering pace of the band's past work around effective melodies and a steadiness in the rhythm. Like past Dredg releases Catch has a conceptual flow. The producer is a veteran of Deftones albums, and it's that band's rich but still rocking palette that's the intent here. It makes sense that Terry Date produced Catch Without Arms, Dredg's second record for Interscope.
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