3 out of 5

Label: Warner Bros.

Produced by: Ross Robinson

Maybe I would’ve liked their first album more.  Also, from the wiki writeup (presumably by a fan): “(Worship and Tribute) moves more towards experimental rock. The album mixes jazz, afrobeat, psychedelic rock and funk among other styles and genres.”  …Uh huh.  Look: these boys can whip up a hardcore tizzy, and lead Daryl Palumbo is a dynamo on the mic.  But jazz?  Psychedelic rock?  This is emo hardcore through and through, straight-up early 2000s Victory Records-fare, with splashes of pop – that would turn into Palumbo’s Head Automatica – thrown in every few tracks.  The Second Coming of Genre Mixing ’tis not.  And I like Head Automatica, but I like them as a beat-heavy dancefloor group; sprinkling that into an album of punky riffing and screaming doesn’t do much for me, although Glassjaw and Robinson saw fit to properly sequence things such that the ‘kinder’ tracks (Ape Dos Mil, Must’ve Run All Day) are followed up by heavier numbers, and it’s certainly worth mentioning that this same era of whiny-voiced screamo (which I feel like we can trace from Blink 182s nasally vocals through the slew of bands that would follow and begin to get “artsier” than three-chord punk) would often include the acoustic or confessional track as part of the catch-all marketing.  Plus – these tracks still definitely fit within the overall vibe of ‘Worship,’ as they don’t completely ditch the distortion or effects.  Lots of exceptions there.  Which, yes, as I confuse you and myself even further if I’m being critical or complimentary, is true of Glassjaw in general.  While I don’t think the end result is anything that mind-blowing, the group’s strengths – namely Palumbo’s vocal control and Justin Beck’s / Todd Weinstock’s aggressive guitar work – display a compositional inventiveness; I take umbrage to calling it jazz, but the disc definitely jumps quickly and seamlessly around punk and hardcore and metal.  Robinson serves this sound incredibly well, ditching his usual low-end obsession to focus on these two sonic pieces and gives the group plenty of little touches of production magic while keeping the relatively raw sound of the recording.

But… it still comes out sounding mostly like another pop-hardcore record, excepting the first track, Tip Your Bartender, which is a searing blaze of screaming and riffing and apparently sounds more like their first album.  When I heard this when first putting on the record, I thought I’d incorrectly written off Glassjaw as a sensation of the era.  However, as the disc continued, I felt I wasn’t too off the mark.  If Worship and Tribute gives you a sense of anything, though, it’s that Palumbo has a lot of talent, and so it’s good that he’s gotten the chance to express it post this band via several other projects.