Review -- Ways To Wisdom -- Bruises

Released
1998

Label
proPAGANda
Music Production
53 Prestige Drive
Stoney Creek, Ontario
Canada L8G 5C2

Reviewed by
Kim Alexander

email
The Ways
To Wisdom

Last Edit/Update
01 February, 1998

Ways To Wisdom

Bruises
(cassette review)

Track Listing

A Side
1. bruises
2. interface
3. liquid head
4. these are my demons

B Side
1. cleanse
2. territorial SLOB
3. love caves in
4. martyr

This tape is hard to eject. The sound reminds me of mid 80s industrial with a flare of 90s underground electronic influence. Definately a must for anyone who enjoys Puppy and related influences. Buy this tape, and email Ways To Wisdom and ask them to release this material as an extended EP!

          Bruises is a complex song involving excellent vocals (as good as Ogre...yes it's true), and lots of distorted twisted synth sounds to keep you busy listening. The bass line is awesome -- with a refreshing back beat of hovering darkness and tasty interjected twisted sounds [that could have eminated from a machine in a science research laboratory...or The Twilight Zone...] which share time and space throughout the piece. Deep bass drums continue with a touch of [Cevinistic] percussion and the speed demon back beat won't let you down. This track, more than the others, reminds me of earlier Puppy. If you didn't know who this was, you might think it was indeed SkinnyPuppy. Excellent track!
          Interface on the other hand is a more guitar driven piece of music but evenly distributed with enough synthetiks to keep metal heads at bay. Again the vocals are very good, "Colors of Isolation...wired across the land...electrical vibrations...pulsing through the sand...". This track is very powerful in its drive, lyrics, beat, complexity, composition and structure.
          Liquid Head another great track with an eerie almost ominous message through the sounds and lyrics expressed within -- "...a soul trops inspired...escaped a passage through fire...", heavy and powerful with a continuous incredible percussion of drums split with harmonics and synth-phonics. This is perhaps my favourite track of the tape. Again, a must for Puppy lovers.
          These are my demons begins with a bass line and interjected noise samples leading into a more contemporary structure of true Industrial. Hard crash yet easy to follow, this track seems montonous, and a bit less interesting to me, but then again I probably have ADD. Nonetheless, it's another powerful addition to an already excellent demonstration of orchestration by The Ways To Wisdom. There are samples of fast paced drums, changes in tempo, and great vocals, which seem to be the norm for this release.

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B Side

          Cleanse opens up with a man stating -- "I want to hear you screammmmmm!" what a way to Cleanse oneself? -- good beginning to the track which has many atmospherics and intermittent snizzles of energy ...the sounds of an electronic gurggling...cymbols interject... darkness ensues and bass lines take off into yet another full-fledged scream..."AAarrrrgggghhhh!!!!!", "Not good enough." -- then slides into a non-stop back drop of unrelenting guitar and some quick snippets of spooky piano...hard 4:4 driven drum beat and freakish jabs of clanking. This track -- Cleanse does just that...not for the weak, definately for the bored.
        This song [territorial SLOB] does sound like something off The Process, not a rip off, in fact, could have been a better remix than an original! Excellent use of the synth here...very intense (180bpm?) with mounting cresendo's of on edge sounds that keep your attention, which sounds cut and pasted...purely electronic in nature this track is awesome! It's fast, well thought out, has its highs and lows as far as magnitude of sound and ends with a female bidding someone goodnight in a clearly audible -- "Bad Dreams again? You want something to help you sleep?"
          Love Caves In is a more melodic tune with those wonderful stabs of elekro-wizardry knob turning that gets you feeling queezy in a sweet sort of way...hence the title. The drums in this track are very good with an even amount of varied sampled sounds and a deeper more satisfying dimensional bass synth drums and piano which break through into a chorus acapella. Wonderful piece, great vocals, nice message -- "It's buried inside of you...."
          Final track Martyr is yet a darker and different track from the others in that it has a more monotonic sound throughout in beat and vocals/lyrics "Just killing time..."...nice harmonics and samples of things snapping, or better yet, dropping to a floor. Again, [Cevinistic] percussion abounds in this track with a hard yet sensitively emotional presentation of melody.

           Overall, anyone who likes Puppy should *definately* have this tape. I hope to see The Ways To Wisdom release this as an EP in the near future.
Thanks for sending it to me, I enjoy the sounds within.