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If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s finding good bands after they’ve broken up. Maybe the majority of Americans don’t like good music, or maybe I’m just slow to catch on to things. I’d like to think it’s the first. Mad at Gravity’s story goes something like that described in my last post on Pulse Ultra. Good band, wrong exposure, no more band. They even had a similar formula; hard guitars, a solid and melodic singer, and occoassional odd-metered rhythms. That’s about where the comparison ends as they each had their own unique sound.

Mad at Gravity pretty consistently revolves around the singer. Unlike other bands that choose this path, the music behind it is just as good… it’s just not the focus of the music. It would be pretty easy to compare these guys to A Perfect Circle, at least a casual listener would find that easy to do. I actually never made the comparison until I just recently checked their website and noticed they thought they sounded like A Perfect Circle. To me that’s like saying Chevelle sounds like Tool, but I guess it serves its purpose. The comparison isn’t totally off the wall, but take it with a grain of salt. I think you’ll find Mad at Gravity to be unique in their own right.

They definitely have an underlying progressive rock feeling, but you have to listen for it. If you’re not paying attention, you could mistake them with any other flavor of the month on the radio. But there are some important and subtle differences. Their songs don’t always follow the usual verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus form. Some tracks have some odd-metered sections, but are subtle enough that it doesn’t feel awkward, and you have to actually pay attention to figure out the count of that odd-meter . I also really like that the guitar and bass aren’t entirely in sync playing exactly the same thing all the time. Really, Mad at Gravity has all the features of progressive rock, it’s just masked with a main-stream sound.

All in all, Resonance (2002) was a really solid album, but it didn’t get the attention it really deserved. You’re gonna have a hard time finding it, since it’s out-of-print. But there are still copies of it floating around that you can purchase through the web. They also still have a myspace page with six full length tracks. Do yourself a favor and check them out.