The Dear Hunter: Act III - Life and Death

"What's the deal with the black guy in the helmet?", "I thought Corleone was the good guy?", "Wasn't the Matrix supposed to be good?" - All valid questions when entering the third part of a saga cold.

We arrive on the scene of former The Receiving End of Sirens front-man Casey Crescenzo's magnum opus with this, the third part of a six-act story which has something to do with falling in love with a prostitute but not being able to withstand her constant whoring.

You can pretty much take it as a given that our pretentious-meter exploded when first exposed to The Dear Hunter. Google "Crescenzo", "overblown", "explosion", "legless" and "orphans" and you'll see the results. It is likely the kind of album where a very serious discussion was undertaken prior to its inception as to whether it should should be written entirely in Latin.

English won out though, and we're rewarded with a capricious mix of Muse, The Mars Volta, elemental-era Thrice and The Sound of Animals Fighting. All delivered with a South-American twist. Nothing says 'epic' like a plodding piano, four-part vocal harmonies, chanting, and marching snare drums: all within the first minute.

It's impossible not to be impressed by the scope of Life and Death, when first-track-proper "In Cauda Venemum" (Latin for 'In the tail is the poison') makes its entrance the sheer sound of the drums is extraordinary and meshes perfectly with the post-hardcore inspired vocals.

By the time the mighty behemoth of a track "The Tank" has also arrived, jaws are set to 'dislocated'. Trading off huge stomping verses with a chorus to make the angels themselves tremble.

This effect is rarely repeated thereafter. Sadly, the fifty-six minutes we spend with Crescenzo is 95% pomp and only 5% fun. While it is a tremendous piece of music, it's more arduous a listen than any album should be. It's as if someone told you a magnificent story, but left out all the adjectives. There's nothing to grab hold off, nothing to spur the imagination, nothing really to relate to. What you hear is exactly what you get.

Any who cite The Mars Volta's one-song live shows as a This Is Your Life moment will be more than satiated here. The rest of us though, would like to have at least half as much fun listening to an album as the musician did recording it.