Following up on their 7” from a couple of years ago, The Glorious Rebellion are now putting out this six-track, ~20-minute album, Euphoric, to (presumably) remind people that they do stuff besides live shows. First track “It’s a Sucker’s Game, Kid” has a vague resemblance to the output of Godflesh shortly before that band’s first dissolution, with grinding guitar rhythms, pasted-in feedback, and electronically distorted grunts of dissatisfaction. “Emmett Brown Has Never Met a Scott That Wasn’t Great” (timely and clever!), follows in similar fashion, though with the vocal effects turned down and more cock-rocky guitar riffs.
It doesn’t resemble either the sludge or noise rock labels claimed by the press release so much as it does some blending of modern hard rock, the sort of country rock that predicates its appeal on advertising how big its balls are, and a main-stream industrial rock band from the ’90s, inheriting some of the weakest traits possible from that lineage. Dull lyrics (yeah, “Just close your eyes and put me down!” is a line interesting enough to bear repeating four times in a row, especially when it’s in a nu-country growl/drawl), uninspired riffs, and plodding drum-work amounts to something that seems to almost be laughing at anyone who would pay for it, let alone listen to it repeatedly.
That said, the production work is generally decent, the instrument channels are kept distinct, the instances of sonic muddiness seem intentional, and there’s maybe a full minute’s worth of moments in which the guitar-work aims for something more than just filling time. Overall, though, it’s tedious; worse yet, if they are aiming for some sort of ironic shittiness, they’re not bringing enough character to the effort to draw in more of a crowd than the adolescents for whom it’s a novel experience. Whether straight-faced or mocking, it pretty much sucks. An instrumental version could be OK, though.