With such a provocative title there is no doubt that labelling the new record from Curl Up And Die as “innovative” is surely reductive. After a seven inch and an EP called “The Only Good Bug Is A Dead Bug”, after being nominated “Stand Out Band for 2001″ by Revolver Magazine, after playing with such bands as Poison the Well and 18 Visions, these four dudes flyed to Boston to record their new album with Kurt Ballou from Converge and what came out was “Unfortunately We’re Not Robots”, a masterpiece of metal core influenced music, even tough they mention as influences such bands as Neurosis, Saves the Day and Black Flag among others.

The album is opened by for songs “We”, “Are”, “All”, “Dead”, of 3 seconds each, and I guess this is a great idea to open an album: making you think “hey each of these four songs mean nothing without the others”. Coming up there are tunes as the full of anger “Ted Nugent Goes AOL”, the slow song of ten minutes “You’d Be Cuter If I Shot You in the Face”, that shows all of the influences of the band, fro metal to even some slow and soft chords, or even “Doctor Doom, A Man Of Science, Doesn’t Believe in Jesus, so why the Fuck do You”, which is some kind of representation of the whole record, with great drums, guitar riffs and raw angry vocals. Of course I think the song titles are some of the best ever ( together with the song titles of bands like DrowningMan, Dillinger Four and Propagandhi), just see “Kissing You Is Like Licking An Ashtray” or “Rich Hall ( Runner Up In A Carson Daly Lookalike Contest)” but find them out for yourself. Talking of the artwork of the album, it is quite hi-tech, and if you think you will be able to read the lyric sheet, well, forget it, it is nearly impossible, but I do not think the band wanted us to read the lyrics, only to see how cool it is the way they wrote the lyric sheet, with some weird effects that seem come out from a dumb program as Autocad.

Curl Up And Die made a kind of masterpiece with “Unfortunately We’re Not Robots”, I already said it, but I think this album has not a lot to do with music in a strict sense. I mean, you could hear this music on a Playstation game, and after playing for two hours, your parents should call an ambulance and take you to the near hospital, but this record is “politics”: the lyrics, all of them against the global intervention and fascism, the society of the money, the lack of freedom in this world; Curl Up And Die are great because they have a lot to say about what’s wrong in this world and they say it without caring of the reaction of the people, and I think this is just great!|carlo@staff.truepunk.com