3 out of 5

Label: Kill Rock Stars

Producer: Panther?

14 Kt. God gets off to an awesomely uniquely bip-boppy start, with Joe Kelly’s jazzy, junglesque drums propelling through a song where Charlie Salas-Hamara chirps about something or other, sounding more passionate than his more chantlike vocals from The Planet The.  Unfortunately, trying to listen to this album on a song-by-song basis is sort of misleading – it’s not distinctly varied enough to have favorite tracks, but it’s also too jagged to work like a HiM record, some kind of long-term beat experimentation thing.  The vocals bubble through at certain points, some guitar hooks bring you back to focus, and Joe’s drums just successfully drive the whole thing.  So at any given moment when you tune in you’ll be into it, you’ll hear something that works in a unique way – an odd phrase, a badass splash of instruments – but as you’re tapping your toe, time passes and you’ve been tapping but not listening.

Very rewarding on repeat, but it’ll fade from memory on initial listens.