City of Ships – Look What God Did to Us

2009 • Translation Loss Records

You'd think that City of Ships would be right up my alley—a neat mixture of post-hardcore and sludge, with some mathy riffs and atmospheric tendencies. I even saw them live supporting Rosetta and enjoyed them quite a bit then. But no matter how many times I listen to Look What God Did to Us, it flatly refuses to click with me.

It's odd because City of Ships does a lot of things right—the instrumentation is good across the board: nice gritty bass lines, interesting and appropriately-complex drumming, great guitar lines that alternate from pretty clean bits to heavy jamming. The vocals are probably the weakest link soundwise; they're definitely not bad—he's a talented singer—but they don't mesh with the music terribly well. They seem too intrusive (vocals come in when it sounds like they shouldn't) and I feel like, stylewise, something grittier and growlier might fit better, like early Mastodon vocals. Still, the overall sound is really good and I like the direction they took there, especially the little things like the organ stabs in "Complacence in the Nest" that make the song. Subtleties like that can really make a difference.

My biggest issue with the album is definitely the songwriting. As I mentioned, there are a lot of cool riffs and grooves to be found throughout; the problem is that they're put together poorly. The different sections of the songs don't lead into each other well, making the music often difficult to follow and thus less memorable. It's like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle by finding pieces that only sort of fit and just jamming them together. The end product won't be very pretty, even if the potential to create something nice is there. There are exceptions; "March of the Slaves" is mostly well put-together, as are others (like "Grandfather Paradox" and the aforementioned "Complacence in the Nest"), so it's not an epidemic but it's still a noticeable flaw.

Well, maybe it's not. Perhaps they actually put a ton of thought and time into crafting the arrangements (at least I hope they did), and the end result just isn't for me. Obviously plenty of people still enjoy it, and still the musicianship and sound is good, so my reasons for considering Look What God Did to Us to be just average are very subjective. So I won't necessarily recommend it but it's probably worth looking into for some fans of the genre.

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