?Classics? of power metal #13: JUDICATOR - At The Expense Of Humanity (2015), upon further review

I asked a few questions last time about how my relationship with At The Expense Of Humanity would evolve, whilst presaging that I probably wouldn't have anything interesting to say about why it is or isn't power metal.  So let's get that part out of the way.  You've got speedy riffs that change notes more than they change keys, and usually a baseline of Helloween-style drumrolls.  Granted, sometimes it skews more towards just plain old metal, including the parts with a Maiden-style mix of galloping riffs and power chords.  The basic chord structure consists almost exclusively of riffs that're versions, maybe a bit simpler, of what you'd hear on an Iced Earth record circa The Dark Saga, which most people would call a power metal record.  So okay, it's not a stretch at all to slot Expense in amongst the classics of our little subgenre here, moving on.

I think that's actually what I need to explain the dichotomy I'm hearing when I try to make sense of this record.  John Yelland and company are all over the place with the vocals, with all sorts of patterns and tones but most of them intense and some unhinged.  (Like a version of Wuthering Heights that's missing the overt folk elements.)  Meanwhile, the guitar and bass parts pretty much stay with one sound.  It's a good sound to be sure - straightforward, thoroughly rooted in vintage metal, and helps support the simpler hooks.  Expense has plenty of good hooks.  Yet that makes for a weird mix with the vocal histrionics.  The net effect is that Judicator end up working with a toolkit that's both a little limited and a little unwieldy for what they're trying to build.  I'd argue that despite John on vocals in particular giving a mostly strong performance, there aren't enough musical ideas, and in particular unique musical ideas, in Expense to sustain everything they're going for.  It's an ambitious project; it's a power metal record like many others.  I'm just going to claim that I've cracked the code and noticed that even here, so early in the life of the band, that John and Alicia were heading in different directions.*

Lots of dichotomies to unpack, one of which being the parts I like, which I tend to really like, and the parts I don't care for, which tend not to outright suck so much as to be interminable.  Nothing better embodies the experience of listening to Expense than trying to piece through the ten-plus-minute behemoth mid-album track "Lucid Nightmare."  The first minute is a big intro that sounds like it should be an album opener and has fuck-all to do with the rest.  Then we resolve into a very direct riff paired with John going slow and theatrical on the verses.  The growls-to-singing prechorus is an early highlight, followed immediately by the lowlight of the "I sit alone" mellow part in which John gets way too drippy for my taste, followed by a part that's basically a sonic mess.  After a couple verses, we proceed to an overlong wibbly-woobly keyboard solo, then abruptly drop into a legitimately haunting keyboard figure very neatly supported by the percussion and then the vocals and then the doubled vocals.  Just gorgeous.  Smooth transition into one of the better heavy riffs of the record, setting up the "forgive him now!" part, and after that then kinda meanders along for another few minutes before somewhere along the line falling back into the original verse-chorus.  All in all, the part from 4:39 through roughly 8:00 might be my favorite few minutes on the whole record.  "Lucid Nightmare" as a whole I'm not convinced holds together as a full song, and worse, coming where it does, weighs down the tracks that follow as the record tries to get its momentum back.

One thing that the vocal parts do very well is, you guessed it, dichotomies.  Many songs are built on a back-and-forth pattern in which the singing will embody two perspectives (usually, although not always, the navel-gazing protagonist's warring impulses).  Sometimes that involves actually bringing in other singers, like on "Life Support," and sometimes it involves the vox and the guitar "talking" to each other.  Most often, though, John (I think) will just do a few different voices to create a dialogue, like with the rasps on "Cannibalistic Mind" or the alternation of low and high singing on the verse of "Coping Mechanism."  Especially in the latter case, it sells the wandering of both moonscapes and hallways at the same time.  The good parts of "Lucid Nightmare" employ this device, as do, well, honestly most of the good tracks, like "At The Expense Of Humanity" (the song).  Even "Autophagia," my favorite track, even if it doesn't do back-and-forth within a section, gets a lot out of the contrastingly distinct types of desperation conveyed in the verses and in Expense's best chorus.  

I do wonder why on earth Judicator don't employ the keyboards more prominently.  A nicely placed harmonic note from the keys adds so much atmosphere that instantly makes "Cannibalistic Mind" and, to a lesser extent the title track, twice as interesting.  Besides the aforementioned "Lucid Nightmare," most of the liveliest change of pace moments come from either keyboard solos or guitar solos in which someone fleetingly remembers that they own more than one guitar pedal.

Before I wrap this up, it's worth talking about to what extent the record does or doesn't make me have "the feels," as the kids used to say.  That part is so subjective that I'll be (for me) brief.  Suffice to say that the majority of At The Expense Of Humanity, even speaking as someone who's lost someone important to cancer, doesn't make me feel many emotions beyond "I really like this part of this song."  "Autophagia" comes the closest, selling the triggers that lead to the narrator basically giving up. That track does a lot of heavy lifting.  Having both brothers on the edge of death in different ways makes for a logical progression into the mix of argument and intervention that makes up "Life Support" and from there the cathartic title track.  That's the three-song run during which Expense best delivers what it's trying for, at least for me.

 

 

One stray comment 

I was amused to notice one bit of repetition in my last post.   I used the same comment about sixty-six minutes being a lot of music to describe Expense as I did to describe Angra's Temple Of Shadows.  Turns out that sixty-six minutes is a lot of music. 

Favorite track:  "Autophagia"

Runner up:  "Coping Mechanism"

Least favorite track:  "How Long Can You Live Forever?"

Rating:  3.5/5

Will I come back to Judicator?

Probably.  But probably more from dabbling in new releases than from really diving into the classic era.

Things I learned about power metal:

- There were still bands by the 2010s putting together combinations of very standard PM elements in new-sounding ways

- I may like verses framed as a conversation/argument even more than I like my wordy choruses

Next:  Early impressions of LOVEBITES' Awakening From Abyss, whenever I get around to it!

*This also sort of supports my pet theory from the Kamelot review that "music by"/"lyrics by" bands in metal might more often feel split like they're working at cross purposes, compared to either a true group effort or to having a single creative leader, like a Sammet or a Ravn, calling all the shots.