H TO HE, WHO AM THE ONLY ONE

I've tried and tried and tried with Hammill and his little group so many times that I've lost count, and whenever I listen to them, they come off as either dragging their music out way too much or trying to be as emotional as possible, but not really taking it anywhere in developing songs. How so many people think these guys were major developers in progressive rock, I don't know. I find them to be anything but that. Hammill could actually be a good vocalist if he wasn't going back and forth in between barely comprehensible whispering and shrilling his lungs out. He'd make a fairly decent vocalist in a metal band for certain, or even an emo band, and it works here with the music, but the music isn't of very high quality anyway. Except for Killer, the rest of the tracks are absolute chaos. And even still, Killer doesn't reach mediocrity. To me, the ideas take way too long to develop or they try to develop them and then they end up going off to nowhere. This is a band that prefers to ride off of emotional highs (drug-inspired or otherwise) rather than work on trying to be competent instrumentalists, something that many other musicians I feel are much better at doing anyway. If Hammill knew just to tone down his vocals a bit instead of trying to be highly emotional, and the band developed these songs at least some, this would be an enjoyable album. I know some prog fans would want to drag me off to the gallows for saying such things, but I need music that actually takes ideas and sees how far it can run with them. For this album, the main idea is going for mediocrity, and failing at even that. I'm sorry, but I can't give this album anything other than 1 star. If you never listen to VDGG, consider yourself lucky.

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