Review: Unwound - No Energy
By Jordan Matthiass, Contributor
[Numero Group; 2014]
Rating 6.5/10
Key Tracks: “Swan,” “For Your Entertainment”
Numero Group has done it again. By “it,” I mean the label has again bought repress rights to albums from long-dead bands and smooshed their releases together for massive and elaborate reissue series profiling said bands, released for the sole purpose of pleasing devotees and completionists.
This time around, Washington brainy post-hardcore band Unwound is enjoying the Numero spotlight. After a few older LPs released under the “202” numeric subset (Numero assigns numbers for bands and each new reissue from their backlog increments that number by .1), Unwound is at 202.4 with the release of No Energy. As decided by calculating overlords, this is the part of Unwound’s discography that includes The Future of What from 1995 and Repetition from 1996, glued together by a smattering of remastered live tracks and b-sides from the era.
No Energy is an interesting piece. It’s not new, but it’s not quite old either. In a year inundated with reunions of ‘90s bands (Mineral and American Football probably have the most fanbase overlap with Unwound), this group choosing to stay split up seems almost more courageous an action than getting back together. This is weird to note because Unwound is currently receiving a fair amount of praise for what people believe are new albums.
Despite new fans probably wanting to jump on the post-hardcore bandwagon, this is not the album with which to do it. At over two hours and consisting of some of the band’s less popular material, No Energy is daunting in no small way. Three LPs filled to the brim with the band’s trademark distortion-fests can seem like too much at once and that’s simply because it is. Even the band’s final album and uncontested masterpiece, 2001’s Leaves Turn Inside You, dragged on at a comparatively brief 75 minutes.
Within those two-plus hours is material that doesn’t divulge too much from the band’s leanings within the mid-’90s. This is middle years material, not scrappy enough to fit with Unwound’s early garage knockouts and not deliberate enough to fit with later formulations.
That’s not to say there isn’t true genius on this compilation, because everything about Unwound’s material screams, “Thought was put into this.”
Take, for example, disc one closer “Swan.” “Swan” features guitar screeches and wails beckoning from far away as Unwound’s (in)famous penchant for repetition gives way to a heavily trancelike structure unlike that of anything from the band’s contemporaries. The track goes on and on and on for eight minutes, snuffing out with the drone of a guitar left to feed back in front of a broken amp.
“For Your Entertainment” is another great look into Unwound’s analytical approach to music. The most forward-looking cut from No Energy, the structure of “For Your Entertainment” draws heavily from the masterful Leaves Turn Inside You while still maintaining a flurry of ragged and raw emotion, a feature Unwound would later mask with slicked-back vocal coolness.
If Unwound stopped there, though, this would be only mildly impressive. However, the band reaches for the sky as stratospheric instrumentation juts out in every direction throughout the duration of “Entertainment.”
No Energy is undoubtedly for established fans and completionists. The casual listener is urged to turn away and check out Unwound’s more cohesive and digestible swan song, Leaves Turn Inside You. If you’re legitimately interested in bridging the gap between Unwound’s sketchy punk days and their cinematic noise rock days, then maybe you’ll find something cool here.
