Topaz Rags - Capricorn Born Again

As soon as the album began, I thought to myself that it could have easily been part of an intro or outro back in the riot girl years, with a dirty fuzz of a bass line and softly tapping drums to set the scene, followed by haunting vocals humming notes and what I can only assume to be words due to their distorted quality every so many beats. Sadly, this is pretty much the entire composition of the album from what I could note. After initially conjuring up a vibe somewhat akin to 'Johnnies in the Bathroom' in the early years of Hole, the Topaz Rags soon failed to deliver the main course and left me with nothing more than a limp salad as a starter.

Given my predisposition to anything grimey sounding that could've leapt right out of the 90's, the fact that this fast turned an easily placed soundtrack to someone's inner monologue during a bad acid trip was a disappointment indeed; a dirge-like mixture of harrowed, ghostly sounding vocals, an overly heavy focus on bass guitar, with the odd simple melody hiding within the overall din but not much else to speak of at great length.

I thought myself lucky to be sorting through old things in my bedroom whilst listening to this as it sent me into a sort of robotic catatonia. Mindless tasks like stacking books on shelves seemed to fly by as I was sucked into the mediocre darkness that this album managed to surround me in. I don't know about you, but catatonic is not one of the side effects I generally like to feel from my musical choices.

It is also worth noting that due to my own seeming inability to turn the 'repeat' function off on Spotify, I managed to listen to this album once and a half before realising that it'd perhaps gone on for a little too long for a mere 8 tracks, not at all realising that I was re-listening to the first few tracks again. Repetitive seems to be the buzzword for this little monstrosity.

Atmospheric? Yes.
Interesting? Possibly...
Enjoyable? Well, without a syringe full of Heroin in my veins, which may have helped somewhat, I'm going to go with a firm no.

All in all, I don't think I'll be listening to the works of Topaz Rags again.