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AntAcidAudio
CR Review
Canadian legends NoMeansNo are back with their 14th (I think) LP outing, All Roads Lead To Ausfahrt. Continuing in their usual array interesting, intense riff laden songs which are sometimes funny, aggressive and epic, but always NoMeansNo. And golly is it good. It’s damn good.
There are no real surprises on this album, mainly because it is extremely hard to know what to expect from NoMeansNo apart from NoMeansNo. There are the usual elements of the songs, riffs and lyrics which are staples of what NoMeansNo are; the brilliantly interplaying, intense, detailed drums and bass, the witty, sometimes insightful and poignant, sometimes just funny and silly, lyrics. There is no worrying about that - that was always going to be there. But the guitar playing of Tom Holliston seems to take on a slightly different dimension to the last LP I heard of theirs. Sometimes, the guitar seems to be on top of the songs, doing similar things that Larry LaLonde of Primus does. Where the drums, bass and vocals are the core, the guitar compliments it all and, what seems to be a variety of guitar effects, help make the songs what they are and helps the band evolve a bit more.
This is not so much of a pop album for NoMeansNo, it seems to be a playful and epic one. The album may contain riffs that are on their more poppy side but the songs are very much epic numbers. This is made wonderfully clear in the second song, In Her Eyes, where the verse riff sounds like something from the Hanson Brothers (NoMeansNo hockey/Ramones obsessed sideproject) but the chorus is very big and very epic.
Another very Hanson Brothers-ish moment is played out in So Low, which really would not sound out of place on any of the Hanson Brothers albums. So Low is probably the most straightforward song on the album, along with Slugs Are Burning (the last official song on the album), and they are in contrast to much of it.
Following So Low, is a brooding, dark, grinding song called Faith that puts you in the middle of the intensity NoMeansNo can poses. Eventually, after four and a bit minutes, it gives way to anther great song, Heaven is the Dust Beneath My Shoes (referred to as Heaven from now on). Heaven is less weighty than Faith but feels equally as epic and intense in a more euphoric, grand way. The two feel like a real journey between two moods of NoMeansNo excel in; from brooding, almost oppressive to euphoric and grand, yet there is always an intense darkness in the background.
Thank god then, for the relatively light feeling of Mondo Nihilissimo 2000 and The Hawk Killed the Punk. The cool looping vocal refrain which matches the cool looping drum beat in Mondo Nihilissimo 2000 is a brilliant, cool piece that sticks in your mind and will stay stuck for a while. And The Hawk Killed the Punk feels like NoMeansNo version of “Voted Off the Island (a Jello Biafra and the Melvins song). They feel like light relief after the depth and epicness of Faith and Heaven.
‘Til I Die feels like the light hearted version of Heaven and it also contains what is the last of a wonderful series of epic choruses. ‘Til I Die and Slugs Are Burning sum up the album brilliantly, with the classic late 90s sound of Slugs Are Burning and the fantastic chorus refrain of ‘Til I Die.
The last song is a hidden song, is a strange nursery rhyme of a song which strange, funny lyrics that is probably the sound of what NoMeansNo would sound like if they become a circus band.
It would be wrong to review a NoMeansNo album and not mention the lyrics. In I See A Mansion In The Sky, the verse takes the vocal rhythm from the tongue twister ‘How Much Wood Could a Wood Chuck …’ They elaborate upon the natural quizzical-ness of the tongue twister to query about postmen, young bucks and more. A lot of the epicness of the songs is added to by the lyrics. Heaven Is The Dust Beneath My Shoes fits the music perfectly, as does Faith, In Her Eyes and ‘Til I Die. I've always wondered if the lyrics or the music comes first to them, neither suffer for the sake of the other.
This is another NoMeansNo album, full of great riffs, epic songs, brilliant vocal melodies and harmonies and brilliant lyrics. It does contain the odd more poppy song but this one seems is more epic and contains a lot of grandeur in both individual moments and songs. For me, this album was not instant but certainly had me putting it on and playing it over and over again. This is NoMeansNo. They are brilliant.
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