Bayside - The Walking Wounded - Music & Performance - CD

Bayside's first album, Sirens And Condolences, was indicative of a good band without direction. While their second, self-titled album found the band with direction, they were still trying a little too hard, as though every instrumental was a brutal battle of attrition towards finding the right pulse. Yet on The Walking Wounded, Bayside takes a different approach, at times radical enough that it sounds like a new band altogether. The productions are stripped down. The vocals are dropped a few levels. The instruments are tuned differently. And more importantly, each song is well crafted, allowed to just exist on its own terms.

The title track is speaks volumes of this new change. After the first 15 seconds opens with an aggressive sequence, the music stammers into a tuba-driven bit in which Anthony Raneri exhaustedly sings: "I'm weak like a one-armed boxer, throwing punch after punch after punch/ I give in." It's a classic case of a well-executed "less is more" approach, as they successfully handle a song in which the high-energy guitars are merely an afterthought.

Bayside takes a lot of different approaches on this effort. "They're Not Horses, They're Unicorns" has an alt-metal edge to it, while "Carry On" takes a straightforward punk approach. Chris Guglielmo gets to shine on "Choice Hops And Bottled Self-Esteem," bringing the song to a thundering conclusion. "Dear Your Holiness," disguised as a prayer of sorts, reminds listeners that they can still get down, Sirens And Condolences style.

Artistic development and maturity are the band's strengths, but there's a lot more to the story of their progress. After a fatal car crash claimed the life of drummer Jon "Beatz" Holohan and left bass player Nick Ghanbarian in the hospital in critical, the crew took on a new outlook in their music. Less negative and dreary than before, the change is felt both sonically and lyrically. Moreover, the tragedy itself gives extra resonance to the album title and many of the song titles, which all suggest that Bayside still feels the loss of its brother.

Bayside may sound a little different, but it's definitely for the better. As a result, The Walking Wounded is an amazingly ambitious album that defies conventions in a convention-oriented genre.