Originally written by Jeremy Garner
“When Chuck Norris has sex with a man, it is not because he is gay, but because he has run out of women.”
“Filming on location for Walker: Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris brought a stillborn baby lamb back to life by giving it a prolonged beard rub. Shortly after the farm animal sprang back to life and a crowd had gathered, Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked the animal, breaking its neck, to remind the crew once more that Chuck giveth, and the good Chuck, he taketh away.”
“Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits”
“Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.”
“Chuck Norris is not hung like a horse… horses are hung like Chuck Norris”
“Chuck Norris does not hunt because the word hunting infers the probability of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.”
Yeah, I’m done now; I just had to get making a jackass of myself out of the way first. Don’t ask me why the hell I decided to review this because in the morning after I’m done reviewing this I probably couldn’t tell you. Maybe it was just the chance to put some Chuck Norris jokes out there but what the hell; I’ll shoot for the more professional idiom of “to draw myself outside of my usual comfort zone of black/death/grind.” Whatever it is, I’m not too sure why the hell a band like The Chuck Norris Experiment would send their release into a sight like MetalReview.com, but I shrugged off my doubts and took the opportunity to get away from my usual dreg and review something different.
The Chuck Norris Experiment boasts a classically mainstream production that while impressively clean suffers many issues that I can never get past. The slightly gruff clean vocals are way too much in the forefront of the music and take the leading role as the main focus for their sound. The drums are gutted to the point of near muting and the bass serves as only a lower frequency to support the guitar tone. The only part of the sound I really dig is the vintage fuzz of and warm, full tone of the guitar.
“Senorita (lookout)” kicks off the soulful punk n roll attitude of the band with its rock song structure and sing along chorus and hook laden style. “Little Demon” slows down
unless I’m in the friggin twilight zone but I could swear “Radioshadow” spends almost all of its annoying seven minutes looping one peppy hand-clapping riff. Perhaps I’m missing the point but I don’t look at redundancy as an admirable trait in the music I listen to. On that point, neither am I too fond of the drummer’s obsession with his one simplistic pattern that finds itself polluting each song with utter monotony.
The most memorable moment on the album is “I’m the Law” that while doesn’t differ from the trend of the songs to bleed into one large blur of upbeat rock, at least seems to be the pinnacle of their efforts. There’s some decent rock solos present on the album, but they’re not enough to pull the album out of its rut. “Reasons For My Bad” starts off promising but quickly veers into the same redundancy the rest of the songs are plagued by. There’s really no depth or real substance to the music to be found. Granted they’re full of personality, but The Chuck Norris Experiment isn’t going to challenge anyone aurally in any conceivable fashion unless you have the technical chops of Kurt Cobain.
I felt like I was overgenerous in my review in some ways, but I’m sure there’s some key demographic for this music that The Chuck Norris Experiment aims at, but I’m apparently not a part of it, nor are most of you who are reading now. However, I can’t deny how well these guys accomplished whatever the hell they set out to do, as these are all professional sounding tracks in their own right. I ultimately found this album to do little more than drag on endlessly, but if you’re looking for radio friendly, poppy, catchy songs (this album offers more groove than the twist), I’d point you to these guys. Personally, I just can’t bring myself to embrace an album like this. Maybe I’m a close mind elitist, maybe I was the wrong guy to cross paths with this album, but I’m not impressed in the least. Either way, don’t let my opinion stand in your way from checking this album out, I’m sure someone will find it to their tastes.
