The Residents: Metal, Meat & Bone The Songs Of Dyin’ Dog The new studio album from th
The Residents: Metal, Meat & Bone The Songs Of Dyin’ Dog
The new studio album from the best band ever has released! Metal! Meat! Bone! A collection of tributes to an old friend of the residents by the name of Dyin’ Dog, an black albino blues artists. This album was announced 2017 and hype around it has slowly built up to the final release!
Musically this is like a mix of blues and industrial with God in 3 Persons (instrumentals), The King & Eye: RMX, Cube-E with some of the 00s stuff like Demons Dance Alone and the higher energy of the 80s stuff over the more recently dark ambient stuff. It’s very fun, nice and beautiful. Its at the same time very grimey and apocalyptic as it also really pretty and melancholic. Overall it paints up this apocalyptic image, to quote the residents themselves “While the idea of an ultimate doomsday, an unending and utter annihilation, has always intrigued The Residents, what’s an apocalypse without its ferocious point guard, its fuehrer, its yellow dog… THE BEAST!”.
It interesting how they recontextualized Dyin’ Dogs lyrics so while they are written from his perspective, it is worked into this angry isolated sadness and gives the album this constant split meaning. As if this is some cultural artifact where can analyze to see how different eras present the same music with the social environments affecting the reinterpretations. This works extra well with how the Dyin Dog’ “demo” versions of the songs are features on the tail end. Which creates for a sort of flashback after we just had seen the visions of the hateful doomsday back too a time long before it.
Generally i didn’t know how the structure of the album would work, as the main album is sort of the first 10 songs, with the cd (and streaming service) having 6 extra songs and then along that the dyin’ dog demos at the end that has been released before (except the last song). My original idea is to approach them sort of just as bonus songs but actually listening to the whole thing ignoring the idea that they are some sort of bonus thing works very well if not better. All that makes the album feel like an even bigger ambitious experience than i had imagine and it never really drags out its welcome as its constantly great.
The songs on here in general is also just great, of course we have the two singles Bury My Bone and Die! Die! Die! which are of course great great tunes. I was nervous to hear the Hungry Hound version, as i really love the In Between Dreams version and while i’m unsure if i enjoy the new version of it as much as that live version, it’s really interesting how they changed it up almost completely for this version which made for an whole other experience. But this album really just if filled to the brim with really great songs with few to none low points i can really think off, there is not a point on the album where i feel like an song should’ve been cut out. Tell Me is an absolute banger, Mama Dont Go is really pretty, the vocal melody and effect on Cold as a Corpse reminds me of Life is Cheap by Flipper and has some Ghost Child vibes, Cut to the Quick has a great weird almost Meet the Residents cabare feeling to it, Evil Hides has a nice jazzy feel to it and Midnight Man works amazingly as a huge emotional closer to the modern Dyin’ Dog songs and ends with just the most beautiful outro. Have already reviewed the Dyin’ Dogs demos, but yet again they are of course great and the residents could have just released them and people would be happy. Of course they are too ambitious to just pander to their audience who are cowards and like i noted before, they fit in to the context of this album really interesting.
So this album definitely lived up to my expectations! Its really really great. This is my second relisten to the album and i feel like i have yet to found everything in it but i already deeply love it! Album of the year!
