I'm finding it increasingly difficult to say after what period of time it's safe to call an album a "classic"; it's a very loaded word and it's tricky to separate an album that's exciting and that you're really enjoying at the time from one that will truly stand out among those more established classic albums from the past. It's particularly difficult with newer styles of music - the excitement of something new can lead to hasty decisions. I remember thinking Full Collapse and Relationship of Command were classics from the first few plays, and those are decisions I'm still 100% behind. There have been countless other albums that's I've rushed into thinking are classics that haven't aged so well.
All that said, I'm going on the record that Wildlife is a classic album and one that I'll still be enjoying in years to come. I was late to the party and only bought this three-and-a-half years ago, but in that time I've played it a lot and those feelings of excitement and enjoyment haven't faded in the slightest. The albums they released either side of it are both great albums (and in different ways), but Wildlife feels like everything fell into place perfectly and it captured everything I wanted from the band in the most incredible way.
What are those things, you ask. To be put it very concisely, it's stories told over heavy music. Each of these songs tells a story, each one deeply emotional but not in a traditional "emo" sense. There are characters you feel genuinely attached to, despite only knowing them for four or five minutes. The perspectives vary wildly, but one amazing theme is that none of them are the most obvious personas for a hardcore frontman to bring to life - struggling parents, lost youths, a church(!?). And yet each of them I feel like I know. I've watched films with less character-progression than these songs.
And the music is brilliantly heavy, even in the more reflective moments. I'm obviously going to dwell on a couple of songs in particular, so I might as well start now - the breaks in King Park and I See Everything are amongst the finest I've heard. I can't imagine the band get compared to Machine Head very often (or very happily), but those two songs are up there with the break in Davidian as some of the most perfect moments in heavy songs.
Since we're on the subject of those two songs, I might as well start gushing about side C of this album. My friend Sarah called it the "narrative side", which for an album full of stories says quite how compelling these songs are. Each side starts with a song title with a lowercase "a" - a Poem starts this side appropriately ("getting darker"), as the songs that follow are easily the darkest. King Park is a harrowing story of a gang-related shooting gone wrong told from an out-of-body experience. Whenever I've seen them live the audience has been full of people singing every word to this song, which is quite an accomplishment since it has over 750 words. I think for everyone in the crowd - certainly for me - singing every word makes that climax of "Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself" even more rewarding. I'm always out of breath, and that exhaustion makes those words even more powerful. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time just to hear that song for the first time again (partly because the first time I heard it I was re-doing the grout in the bathroom, which is a really shitty memory to attach to such a great song).
A gentle guitar gives you a moment to take in what just happened before Edward Benz, 27 Times starts and tells the story of a hardware clerk helping an elderly man who'd been attacked by his son, who suffered from schizophrenia (the layers of removal from the subjects is a interesting device in itself - I imagine people will write books about this one day). When I think of mental illnesses, I think of the characters in this song and how it affects the lives of so many people around them. It's quite fascinating. The side closes with I See Everything, which tells the story of a teacher who lost a child to cancer in the form of diary entries read out in a classroom (again with the layers of removal). The impact on the student sat in the classroom is clear as the song closes out with their amazement at the teacher's ability to keep her faith. This song always hit hard, but now as a parent I can barely sit still from the shivers it sends down my spine. The words "January 19: We buried our son today" are delivered in the most incredibly brutal way imaginable - a date hasn't had such an impact on me since that moment in The Shining when the word "Tuesday" appears on the screen with a single attack of violins as the snow and mania starts to kick in.
It's almost a relief when the needle runs-off and you get a moment to recover, although All Our Bruised Bodies... recaps the stories and hammers the point home with "Everyone in the world comes at some point to suffering", a horrifying reminder that these stories aren't far-fetched tales but things that could and do happen to anyone.
I normally write about mundanities like buying the record and how nice the colour of the vinyl is but, as with every time I get to the end of this album, I'm currently an emotional wreck and good for nothing.
Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve, insert
Tracks: 14
Cost: £17.40 new
Bought: Banquet Records, Kingston
When: 06/08/15
Colour: Purple
Etching: none
mp3s: none
