There’s a framing narrative of sorts on I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven, where The Callous Daoboys’ album is being exhibited 300 years in the future in the Museum of Failure. Our helpful narrator over the speaker system gives us the lowdown on what it entails: “heartbreak, anguish, frustration, infidelity, lust, addiction, divorce, and suffering.” So, evidently, we’re talking about perceived personal failure, then. That’s good, because there’s no conceivable way its creative fruits could ever be deemed as such.
The Callous Daoboys have always been great, a beacon of craft in the midst of frequent mathcore excess that puts actual songs way down on the list of priorities. That could just as easily apply to them—they’ve not been averse to loosening their own leashes in the past—but in the way you can always tell a hanger-on from the genuine article, there’s a Daoboys flair that always manages to shine through. Maybe it’s the foot they’ve got in Myspace screamo revivalism; maybe it’s simply because they’re better than everyone else. On I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven, it’s likely both. Here, on this 2006-ass album that always sees fit to whip around genre and form on a whim, The Callous Daoboys have made one of the most deliriously, unwittingly listenable albums of the year.
It’s probably worth picking out what doesn’t work right from the jump, ‘cause there’s not a lot of it. III. Country Song In Reverse, while an exceptionally daring closing suite that seeks to do as much as possible in its 12 minutes, is where all the album’s bloat has been funnelled into, and you can really tell while listening to it. Also, as a more minor nitpick, it’d be nice for this band with a dedicated violin player to have that be a more prominent, consistent element in their sound. Rich Castillo’s saxophone is; Amber Christman should be awarded that same luxury.
As far as complaints go, that’s about it. Even the stuff about the violin is only really that way because its sparing uses are so effective, creating nerves of small but potent instability on Two-Headed Trout and The Demon Of Unreality Limping Like A Dog. As a unit, The Callous Daoboys truly excel often, thanks to an almost paradoxical level of focus brought to this insane collection. They’re almost perfectly aligned with where The Dillinger Escape Plan, Every Time I Die and The Used were in the mid-2000s, often all at the same time. The first song is Schizophrenia Legacy, which might start with the expected slashes of guitars and Velociraptor-style metalcore carnivory, but is plenty capable of interspersing that with swatches of downbeat emo and outright smooth jazz. It’s hard to look away, and not for the usual reason of mathcore being the aural equivalent of a multi-vehicle pile-up.
A lot of credit needs to go to Carson Pace for that, a frontman who embodies the chameleonic-yet-consistent abilities that the Daoboys hold high. He’s like if Daryl Palumbo decided to consolidate his glassjaw and Head Automatic personalities into one place, while still keeping the facets of each distinct. And there’s not some conspicuous mismatch to any of that; it all comes totally naturally. Just take the one-two of Tears On Lambo Leather and Lemon—the former is a blend of erratic hardcore brutality, interludes of skittering chillwave, and an extra pair of jaws from Orthodox’s Adam Easterling for taste; the latter is borderline acoustic-pop, slithering by on padded drums and bass and added rustles of guitar. It’s a baffling butting of heads, though one that’s never subjected to clunk or a grinding juxtaposition. It’s all entirely Daoboys, plucked from different sectors of a musical map that’s only been drawn out further since the last time, but still unequivocally coming from the same band.
There’s something exceptionally freeing about the way that plays out, and the feel that I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven can not only be almost anything, but succeed at it. Let’s not overlook how this is an album that has an airy downtempo / soul cut as its centrepiece in Body Horror For Birds, in the same general vicinity as Idiot Temptation Force, a hardcore rager with the calling card of “Ugga-ugga-boo, ugga-boo-boo-ugga!” It’s a testament to how well The Callous Daoboys have a hand on their frankly insane artistic breadth. It’s the main takeaway from the album, and one that’s no less impressive on the dozenth spin as it is on the first. Of the many angles with which composition, production and overall music-making technique are approached from, there’s the tightest of beads of how each one seems to work.
And among all of that, there’s the thread of Myspace-inspired nostalgia that might just be the Daoboys’ overall secret weapon. Not strictly the ‘nostalgia’ part of that, mind (though it’d be a lie to say that doesn’t factor in at all), but the way it contributes another flavour to the broth that’s already brimming with taste. It’s where the band’s melodic angle draws from the most, as well as the area of expression and bloodletting that Pace opts for with frequently eruptive results. (Plus, just look at the song titles; they speak for themselves.) At its purest, Distracted By The Mona Lisa could have been lifted from In Love And Death with zero change. As a piece of a grander work, though, it’s enriching to the Daoboys’ material in such a big way.
By the end of I Don’t Want To See You Heaven—including that behemoth of a closing number that, yes, is the least gripping song here—the impression is that The Callous Daoboys have shown off so much about themselves that’s special, it’s a wonder it’s not more overwhelming. It certainly could be from a weaker band, or one not as acutely in touch with their abilities as this. The Daoboys, though, are not a weaker band, and they’re fully aware of what they’re capable of. It’s how they can craft an opus like this, couched in the notion of ‘failure’ that goes on to shatter expectations at every turn. Quite literally, this is as far from a failure as you can possibly get.
For fans of: The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Used, SeeYouSpaceCowboy
‘I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven’ by The Callous Daoboys is released on 16th May on MNRK.
Words by Luke Nuttall
