Shiner: Schadenfreude

Shiner's The Egg is one of my all-time favorite rock albums. I stumbled onto it back in 2002/2003, just in time to find out the band was breaking up. I spent the subsequent 15+ years catching up on their back catalog and following guitarist/vocalist Allen Epley's subsequent (and equally excellent) band, The Life and Times. I've lost count of how many times I've seen The Life and Times live, and I was lucky enough to catch Shiner back in 2017 during the Lula Divinia re-release tour.

All of which is to say, I'm a huge Shiner/Allen Epley fan. When I heard the band was recording new material, I was excited, but not without some trepidation. I've seen other beloved bands make their returns over the years, to mixed results. The Pixies… meh, Indie City had its moments. Swervedriver… I'd be lying if I said they haven't lost a step. Quicksand… a little too sedated. Failure… still good but they don't sound like Failure to me anymore. Like these bands, Shiner ended things on a very high note. While I'd love to hear new music from them, might I be happier worshiping their near-perfect legacy?

There's only one way to find out—a track by track review. Let's do it.

1. In The End

The album kicks off slowly, with Allen Epley singing in a slightly lower register (and with a little more drawl) than usual, and I'm already in full-blown Garth Algar “we fear change” mode. It's a teasingly drawn out intro, but once the song hits full force at the 1:15 mark, I'm pretty much on board. That crescendo of Shiner-y goodness lasts for nearly two full minutes and is almost enough to dispel any concerns that the band might not be back in full form. It never gets quite as explosive as I'd like, but it's heavy enough to impress. While I wish the band had come screaming out of the gate, this is fine. 6.5/10

2. Life as a Mannequin

And now I'm ready for the album to pick up steam, but Shiner's got other ideas. ‘Life as a Mannequin’ is another slow burn of a song, but it's a damn good one. There's a cool The Thing-esque bass line, pulsing in the background, building tension as the guitars swirl and drone around it. The chorus delivers, coupled with a haunting lead melody that makes me wish Failure still made songs like this. 9/10

3. Genuflect

We're still firmly in mid-tempo Shiner land, but this one's got a little more skip in its step. Another bass-driven song that builds to a Jawbox-esque chorus,  ‘Genuflect’ seems a little repetitive on first listen, never culminating in anything significant enough to justify that repetition. And that's true if you're listening to it while doing the dishes. But put on your headphones and focus, and there are a lot of fantastic little details in the drumming (and its interplay with the guitars) that pull things together nicely. It's a Meshuggah song for space rock fans. 6.8/10

4. Nothing

A much-needed shot in the arm. All of the Shiner elements are locked firmly in place here. Cool dueling lead melodies snaking around another excellent bass line, grounded by increasingly propulsive drumming. It never quite launches into the stratosphere, but this is a winner. 8/10

5. Low Hanging Fruit

And we're slowing down again. Way down. Like slow dancing at the coolest prom in the world, slowed down. If it's not clear by now, I generally prefer Shiner's more uptempo material, and I'm a little disappointed there's not more of it on Schadenfreude. However, this is a very good song. There's a lot of cool drone and subtle little melodies playing throughout. It's a little dirge-y, but the chorus and the lyrics pay it all off. It's also the perfect palette cleanser before the (SPOILER ALERT) excellent ‘Paul P Pogh’. 7.8/10

6. Paul P Pogh

Remember the first time you listened to Metallica's Hardwired…To Self Destruct, and you were all, “Man, this is good, but I guess they're done with the kind of songs that made me fall in love with them in the first place.” And then James and Lars were like, “Oh, you like our old stuff? Well, here's a little song you might like called ‘Spit Out the Bone’”. And you were all, “Goddammit guys, why didn't you make a whole album like this???”

‘Paul P Pogh’ is catnip for fans of The Egg. It's got that Shiner™ dark sense of urgency that scratches itches deep in your cynical soul. 10/10

7. Swallow

Another haunting, downtempo song. Maybe I'm still riding high off of ‘Paul P Pogh’, but I really like this one, and I think it works as a cool-down after its predecessor's explosive energy. 8/10

8. O Captain

A sedate epilogue, ‘O Captain’ is a quiet, dreamy track that I thoroughly enjoy. It's a perfect way to close out this, or really any, Shiner album. But then again, so was ‘Swallow'. 8/10

Going track-by-track with this album, I'm left a little surprised by how much I like the individual songs on it, because my overall sense of the album is, “It's fine. Really, it's good. No seriously man, I like it.” Album sequencing is a real bitch. Great albums have an ebb and flow in tone and song construction where each piece works to push and pull the listener along to the next track. Schadenfreude never quite gets there for me, mostly due to an imbalanced ebb-to-flow ratio. There's just not enough contrast in tone and tempo to keep me engaged for its relatively brief 38 minute run time. I needed a ‘Third Gear Scratch’, ‘Glass Jaw Test’, or ‘Pills’ to get a little more momentum going, particularly in that first half.

So as comeback albums go, we're firmly in Swervedriver, I Wasn't Born To Lose You territory here. It's very good and I'm glad one of my favorite bands is back. I'm sure I'll revisit this album after some time away from it and say, “You know, this is better than I remember.” But I'm a little concerned we're at the beginning of an entropic drift towards Snoozeville, and we won't know we're there until the next album when we're shaking our heads and saying, “We're a long way from ‘For Seeking Heat'.” 

Fucking Swervedriver…