Catch Without Arms

Concept rock albums have been on the comeback as of late. With bands like The Mars Volta and Radiohead building complex themes, stimulating layered thought upon thought and rocking out simultaneously, the rock biz may now just be more willing to shove acts through the mill that actually have something to say. On Catch Without Arms, Dredg continues to do just what their name would suggest -- they dig deep and search. It is a haunted and lonely concept album, filled with tender messages of love, loss, fear, death, violence, grace and redemption. The simple fact that it's terribly well-produced (by rock vet Terry Date) and full of robust, throbbing guitar licks throws them far ahead of the pack of soft-edged pop metal acts with whom they must share the airwaves.

So -- what is this album about exactly? Surviving a car crash? The death of a friend? Recovery from addiction? Do these guys listen to a lot of Bach in addition to '80s metal? The answers are probably a combination of all of the above, and the resulting album is dark but surprisingly cool. It's clear from the album's opening guitar chords that these guys continue to concern themselves with the quality of listener's experience first and foremost, and here they give us quite a bumpy but fascinating little ride.

They open with "Ode to the Sun" a hook-laden but startlingly moving track that is clearly about a destructive accident, and shows the band climbing to surprising new heights. Each song melts effortlessly into the next (like the aforementioned Volta), like the scratchy "Bug Eyes" as it bleeds into the title track, a song full of requisite rants against the inevitable savagery of the music industry. "Zebraskin" is a densely produced track about the gut-wrenching realities of addiction. This is a troubling and familiar theme to them and crops up often, as on the even more stirring "Hung Over on a Tuesday."

They get Brit-popish (a Radiohead influence playing itself out, perhaps) on "Sang Real," a song built on break beats and tinkering keyboards. "Jamais Vu" is sweet and sad filled with some of the prettiest guitars on the record. They end, sadly, on their strongest and most vibrant note, although this was surely no accident. "Matroshka" embodies an effervescence and a brightness that could have benefited the rest of the album. The song is the album's most energetic with surging U2-like guitars. It is to their credit that the album, concept or not, has such a clearly defined structure throughout and whatever it is that they gave us is, no doubt, entirely intentional. Heartfelt, sincere, and thoughtfully constructed, Catch Without Arms wrestles with thorny themes and dark, destitute imagery in a surprisingly inspirational way.