IOP PROFILE: FAILURE By Derek Dillion - IOP, March 2009
I’ll never forget the first time I heard Failure. I had missed the Tool show the night before, but my friend Paul caught a demo tape of the opening act thrown out into the crowd by Mr. Maynard James Keenan himself.
It was a four-song teaser of material from their second album, Magnified. It began with “Moth”, a dynamic song that alternates between trippy and dark. Cryptic lyrics like “…sometimes puddles terrify me as they gaze up…” fascinated me as I had discovered writers like William Burroughs and Steven Jesse Bernstein around that time. I was impressed immediately. It wasn’t long before I found the full-length CD and bought it, and soon after acquired their debut, Comfort. |
|
|
There was a drastic difference in the overall sound of the two discs, owing a great deal to the fact that Steve Albini produced Comfort at Pachyderm studios, and Failure produced Magnified themselves. Albini was already known within indie rock circles as a drummer for Big Black and Shellac. Failure hired him as a producer having admired his work at the helm for The Breeders. He would eventually go on to produce In Utero for Nirvana.
His mixes are very drum-heavy and raw-sounding. Comfort kicks off with “Submission”, a song with vaguely suggestive lyrics like “Two long legs, one red mouth…”. It’s brief, but gives a taste of where they will take you for the duration of the disc. It continues with the machine-like rhythm of “Macaque”, the descending arpeggios of “Something” and the driving bass of “Screen Man”. “Swallow” is simple, but powerful, with an almost tribal beat. “Muffled Snaps” could be a pop song if it had slicker production and lighter lyrics. “Carve the rage into you, I absorb all the pain, It comes so easy from my arm to your face”; not exactly the most radio-friendly words set to a melody. “Kindred” convulses violently, while “Pro-Catastrophe” anticipates the apocalypse enthusiastically, proclaiming “the bomb’s so boring, I want to see some blood”. “Princess” is less than two minutes, leading into the closing track “Salt Wound” which pounds away until fading into a slow, swirling, psychedelic outro. They achieved a continuity on this album, which would become a trademark of their style, where every song whets your appetite for the next one. The music was aggressive, but neither metal nor punk. Ken’s vocals are somewhat buried in the mix, but his voice wasn’t ready for the spotlight just yet. |
Having learned a lot from Albini, Ken Andrews and Greg Edwards abandoned the fuzzy, abrasive texture for a more slick, atmospheric and heavy sound. Drummer Robert Gauss left the band and was soon replaced by Kellii Scott. Ken sang all of the vocals, which now sounded more confident, while he and Greg would alternate on guitar and bass. Adam Jones of Tool would join them onstage when they toured together. I’ll never forgive myself for missing that show.
Magnified kicks off with the mechanical rhythms of “Let It Drip”, showcasing the band’s new definitive style, spacious and smiling in the dark. It is followed by “Moth” and “Frogs”, which were both included on the demo from the show. “Bernie” is mellow and psychedelic, with an undertone of menace. The title track is the fastest-paced song on the disc, while “Wonderful Life” would sound happy if not for lyrics like: “It’s not about the boy found slain, it’s not about his lips blood-drained, you should have seen his dreams dissolve into the dumpster behind the mall”. The words reflect the frightening underbelly of suburban life. |
|
|
“Undone” was the only song off the album to be made into a music video, which was directed by Ken, who went to film school with Adam Jones. “Wet Gravity” is a moving narrative about a girl’s emotional experience after going through an abortion. It’s not a ballad. “Empty Friend” might be the poppiest song in the bunch, but the last song is “Small Crimes”, which invokes all the eeriness of a well-made horror film. |
| Between Failure’s second and third album, Ken and Greg formed side project The Replicants with former Tool bassist Paul D’Amour and Zaum keyboardist Chris Pitman, who is now in Guns ‘N Roses. The self-titled disc featured only cover songs of artists such as Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, Missing Persons, John Lennon, Gary Numan and a Paul McCartney song with Maynard James Keenan on vocals. They even did a music video for “Destination Unknown”. |
|
In 1996, Andrews began producing other bands, such as Molly McGuire and Blinker the Star. Echoes of Failure’s wall of guitar and heavy layering of sounds could be heard on those efforts, especially A Bourgeois Kitten by Blinker the Star.
Fantastic Planet is secretly the “Dark Side of the Moon” for the Lollapalooza generation. It is an album that was carefully constructed with layers of detail and dimension, and it was to be their swan song effort.
It begins with “Saturday Saviour”, a slow, cryptic ode to one-night-stands, then “Sergeant Politeness” picks up the pace. There are instrumental interludes between a few of the songs. The band’s sense of continuity was seamless. The songs flow into one another perfectly. After “Segue 1”, “Smoking Umbrellas” is the song most reminiscent of the material on Magnified, but with a subtle complexity that they were just discovering here. “Pillowhead” is short, punchy, and bears some resemblance to the title track of the previous album, only with vocal melodies that were at the very edge of Ken’s vocal range. “Blank” is a ballad that reveals a little about the band’s drug use. It is the most textured song on the album, with hammered dulcimers and strange samples. |
|
|
“Segue 2” acts as an intro to “Dirty Blue Balloons”, another ballad that hints at some of the band members’ drug habits. “Solaris” is one of the stand-out tracks on there, sounding like a cross between Voivod and Nirvana, sci-fi inspired lyrics about cryogenics hover above aggressive grooves that swirl into a mind-bending crescendo. “Pitiful” alternates between the stop-and-go rhythms of the chorus with a light, choppy riff. “Leo” extends from the previous song as if somehow part of it even after the last notes of “Pitiful” fade out. “Segue 3” leads into “The Nurse Who Loved Me”, a song made famous by the cover performed by a Perfect Circle. “Another Space Song” is one of the most outstanding songs of the band’s career. The words are a triple entendre about drug use, love and space travel. The song features some of their most poetic lyrics, like “Gravity’s so far away wrapped on that shrinking ball”. “Stuck On You” was their biggest hit song, and it was their second music video. It is infectiously catchy, which is exactly what the song is about: an infectiously catchy song that gets stuck in your head. It flows into “Heliotropic”, which continues the space theme of the album and exhibits an expansiveness of sound that was not to be replicated until Ken’s solo album. Fantastic Planet closes with “Daylight”, a dynamic piece that ended up being the band’s farewell song. |
Troy Van Leeuwen joined the band in time to go on tour as lead guitarist, expanding the group into a four-piece. He was to go on to play in A Perfect Circle, Enemy (along with drummer Kellii Scott) and finally, Queens of the Stone Age.
After touring in support of that record, the band broke up. Drugs played a part, but also, the success they seemed destined for eluded them.
The demise of the band gave way to other projects. Greg played with former Replicants bandmates D’Amour and Pitman in Lusk before assembling his current project Autolux. Kellii has been the drummer for Melissa Auf Der Maur, Blinker the Star and the Campfire Girls. Ken played with On (essentially a solo project) and Year of the Rabbit before recording his first solo album, Secrets of the Lost Satellite, on his own label Dinosaur Fight Records. |
|
|
A reunion seems unlikely, but the band has released Golden, a DVD with a bonus disc of unreleased material, and Essentials, a two-disc set of rarities and alternate versions of Failure songs. Golden includes the two videos they filmed, as well as the video for “Destination Unknown” by the Replicants. It also features a documentary about the band where you can choose commentary by Ken or Greg. Greg is actually very funny. He sounds somewhat unprepared, but full of amusing anecdotes. On the audio disc are very raw tracks that reveal a lot about the evolution of their sound, especially “Mange”, which was written between Comfort and Magnified, and showed the transition they were beginning to make. Essentials includes some hard-to-find Failure tracks like “Count My Eyes” and “Comfort” (the song was not on the album that shares its name). |
Ken continues to work as a session musician, producer and mixer for other artists. His resume includes Beck, Nine Inch Nails, Tenacious D, Pete Yorn, Creeper Lagoon, Jimmy Eat World and Charlotte Martin, who married Andrews in 2005.
VISIT: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/FAILUREGOLDEN
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/FAILURETRIBUTE
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/KENANDREWS
BUY FAILURE MUSIC AT: http://cdbaby.com/cd/failuremusic & http://cdbaby.com/cd/failuredvd
|
