Uniform & The Body - Mental Wounds Not Healing

Surprise, surprise! The Body is back at it with yet another half-ass collaborative effort, this time with Uniform. Just last month I was giving The Body praise for their new LP this year (I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer). They’ve always been a band that seems ready to to a split release or a collaborative project at the drop of the hat. And on one hand I admire their prolific output and eagerness to work with so many other artists, but on the other hand I wish they would slow down with the collaborations a bit because they do so many of them and it’s so clearly not their best work. A lot of the time it just feels like they’re just dumping their sound’s ingredients into a pot with another band’s ingredients and hoping for a stew that pleases company.
It feels like The Body does these collaborative projects just for the sake of doing them at this point, and it really does just feel like a stew with a bunch of frozen ingredients tossed into a pan. I wish The Body would actually try expanding their own sound during these collaborations since they do so many. But like many before, this 27-minute collaboration is just boring and just sounds like an advertisement of both of these bands’ noisy sounds: Michael Berdan’s shouts mixed with Chip King’s new sinister style that showed up once on The Body’s new album, the high pitched distorted screams that cover every The Body album, and some unimaginative electronic and guitar drones.
I must say, also, that the album cover for this thing looks terrible. And why is it named after a line in “Crazy Train”?
This project just sounds so rushed and poorly nurtured. I think both of these bands could do better together, but the way The Body goes about collaborative projects just has to change if any of them are to be worthwhile in the future.

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