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I had a habit back in high school of blindly buying cd’s that were under ten bucks from artists I had never heard. I wouldn’t recommend this tactic as I think I just happend to have an uncanny ability at picking out new good music… which would explain why I’m audacious enough to run a site such as this one. Anyways, it’s this tactic that allowed me to find bands like Finger Eleven, 12 Stones, Full Devil Jacket, Glassjaw, Isle of Q, Mad at Gravity, Pusle Ultra, Taproot, Shuvel, Three Doors Down, and 8stops7 (just to name a few) before they really got any attention.

I found Onesidezero among my blind purchases. Onesidezero has been one of my aces in the hole for obscure bands that the common listener would actually like (second to Shun). Their debut album Is this Room Getting Smaller? (2001) is a very cohesive album and one of my favorites to date. If you haven’t guessed it already, I’m a guitar player. So I tend to be drawn to guitar driven music. But what makes this album unique is the often distinct lack of strong rhythm guitar… and there are two guitars! I absolutely love how they do a great job of the drums and bass guitar keeping a song going while one guitar is playing a subtle melody and the other is playing something all together different and equally as subtle. This was a very unique take on what a band can do with two guitarists… neither is really rhythm or lead. Consequently, the heavier parts are heavier, more moving, and abrupt.

I’m a big advocate of heavy rock with solid singers. I can do metal and screamo with the harsh vocals, but I really love the mixture of hard guitars and an actual singer. For the most part, all of the vocals are sung on this album. But sometimes you just gotta show some raw emotion. Onesidezero’s singer has a unique mixture of Maynard (Tool) and sometimes he reminds me Serj (System of a Down)… seriously. It’s a peculiar mix, but he’s got his own twist. I just like him. Simple as that.

So back to that blind list of purchases. Some of those bands never put out anything past their debut, others took off in a great way, and a couple lost their touch and should burn in hell. Seriously… Finger Eleven, what were you smokin’ when you made that last album? Taproot, same goes to you. Anyways, I had to wait a good long time for Onesidezero to crank out another album. Six years to be exact, and of course I didn’t actually get around to buying the new one until today. So seven years really. Honestly, I was really worried when I heard about their new self-titled album. I didn’t give them the same courtesy I gave with my first purchase. So I checked out as many clips as I could on iTunes and MySpace. I was very discouraged from buying the album. My immediate reaction was unpleasant. But Nirav’s comment on the Mogwai post encouraged me to give it a real shot. How representative can 30 second clips be? In order to really listen to the album with an open mind, I had to hear it as a whole.

I definitely had very high expectations coming from their debut album, and those expectation were definitely not met. But I think it received some undue harsh reviews because of it. The new self-titled album actually has its moments. It still has some pretty decent guitar work and it reminds me of some older System of a Down. It has a few more guitar solos than the their first album (which had none really). The guitar is just different than the first album… and justly so. They got a new guitarist. So it’s to be expected. That said, they got a completely different guitarist. I loved the first album because the guitar work was intricate and never flashy. This new carried neither of those traits. I get the impression he throws in a flashy lead at every shot he gets. They may be better than average riffs, but overall, the new album is much more radio friendly and has far fewer subtle intricacies that I grew to love in their first. I think the common listener would like it for a while and then move on as usual. The new album no longer fits the description hard rock fused with subtle melodies. It’s now, hard rock fused with in your face radio friendly melodies. I can at least appreciate them trying to incorporate some relatively good guitar work into the mainstream again, but overall I’m rather disappointed.

That said, I still fully and strongly encourage everyone to get Is This Room Getting Smaller? and hopefully the clips I’ve chosen will be enough to convince anyone on the fence about it. I chose Shed the Skin because it exemplifies their subtle use of guitars rather than always being loud and in your face, and also Soak for the same reason… also because its chorus is in a 7/4 time signature. I have an unhealthy obession with odd meter. If you want to check out their new stuff, I strongly suggest you check out their website first. It automatically streams a few of the new tracks in full.