Radioman - Intake
Mental Records
Nu-metal, hardcore, industrial combination
7 songs (38'21")
Release year: 2003
Reviewed by Alex

Radioman hail from Southern Oregon and have been a total unknown for me. My bet is, though, not many regular readers of this site are familiar with them either. The reason is simple, Radioman does not play any particular brand of Metal regularly covered here. By the same token, I do not regularly listen to music like this either, so therein lays a reviewing challenge. I had to listen quite a few times to an album like Intake so I would not denigrate it on the grounds of this being “not entirely my cup of tea”. And, surely enough, my cup of tea it wasn’t.

Radioman is difficult to categorize because they play the strangest kind of music. It is a mixture of some downtuned metallic (mostly of “nu” category) riffs, some hardcore vocals, industrial beats and grooves and quite a bit of attitude. The guys wouldn’t win a lot of trophies at the “technical playing” competition as all songs revolve mostly around the same riff-segment repeated a large number of times. Both bass and guitar playing are quite simplistic. Except a few droning leads (Among), Doug Striley just chugs away at the slightly lower than mid-tempo speed. Just about every track starts out slowly with Dmf’s bass and Scott’s drumming laying the rhythm’n’groove foundation. Such sections are most of the time accompanied by more reserved, almost spoken vocals by Doug. Whenever there is time to ratchet the pressure, and that point inevitably comes in every song, Doug starts screaming a-la hardcore, and a heavier guitar appears in the mix. The whole thing is almost like a one long hardcore breakdown without over-the-top anger spilling out into the moshpit. Some tunes are more anguished (Suicide) and both guitar tone and vocals respond to the idea. As some of the songs last in excess of 6 min, certain riffs and lyrical phrases darg (“so far away” on Set Away is repeated 20 times), and the whole album may grind on the listener.

OK, so you are reading this and thinking that I didn’t like the album. I’ll be honest with you and say, “No, I didn’t like any of the individual components of what makes Radioman’s music”. Here comes the paradox. I think I got the overall purpose without understanding the nature of its constituents. In an ever slight and elusive way Radioman applies an enormous amount of psychedelic pressure on the listener. As all songs on the album proceed according to the same blueprint, you will either turn it off, or, like me, will be sitting there somehow swaying to the rhythms mesmerized and bewildered. It is good that the CD does not last more than 40 min. It would have been too much to take on more than that of this minimalistic psychosis.

A certain type of crowd, Tool, Helmet and, maybe even Nirvana, fans will find this interesting. The rest of you should stay away.

Killing Songs :
Desperate Children, Suicide
Alex quoted 51 / 100
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