Your debut album just conquered rock radio like it was France, and you're being hailed as the next "Next Big Thing." You swim daily through a giant pool of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck.Your band has just set the bar for as seemingly paradoxical a genre as acoustic metal. You have money, power, respect. What do you do now?
You fire the bastards who helped you get there and announce that you intend to continue performing under the same name while hanging on to all the copyrights and associated royalty payments, that's what.
As incomprehensible as such a decision might seem, that's precisely the move Days of the New frontman Travis Meeks pulled in 1998 -- at the jaded old age of 18. Tantric, which includes the three poor souls who served as Meeks' backing band in days of yore, promptly regrouped in Talk Show fashion with new (and suspiciously Meeks-like) vocalist Hugo Ferriera for an album that came out quickly and came off like a "shove it" missile aimed at their former employer's allegedly bloated noggin.
OK, fine. Though it may make for a wonderful article introduction and will surely be milked for all it's worth by morally deficient reviewers, it's not entirely fair to Tantric to keep playing up the importance of that history. "After We Go" is a sophomore album, implicitly meaning that it is Tantric's attempt to establish itself as an act which can remain viable even without a captivating soap opera of a biography.
Furthermore, for all their initial vocal similarities, the two branches have actually diverged quite a bit by now. Meeks has gone off in a darker, more progressive electronica-tinged direction with his now-solo project, and Tantric continues with their skillfully crafted (if overwhelmingly generic) brand of mainstream Top-40 rock. Remember "Breakdown?" Very little has changed since then.
Ferriera occasionally meanders too much as a lyricist and is a few years behind the curve on the Eddie Vedder cloning championed by baritone valedictorian Scott Stapp. He may be a bit one-dimensional, but the fact remains that he's very good along that one axis and can usually carve out a sizable path in front his band-mates. His overtly "Look at me, I'm a rock star!" vocal poses are often challenged by the backup harmonies of guitarist Todd Whitener, an equally skilled (if somewhat less flamboyant) singer in his own right.
As a matter of fact, it is Whitener who delivers the best vocal performance on the disc, a staccato Disturbed-inspired pre-chorus passage in the title track which effortlessly eclipses both Ferriera's role in that same song as well as his own attempted nod to Disturbed in the single "Hey Now." As a result, Whitener's voice is featured much more prominently in the mix than that of your average modern rock second banana, and at times the dialogue between the two is actually reminiscent of the Chris Cornell/Eddie Vedder duets from the 1990 Seattle All-Star "Temple Of The Dog" project. Sometimes the combination of mixing technique and contrapuntal composition even causes the relationship to invert entirely, with Ferriera unintentionally coming across as the secondary harmony to Whitener's lead.
Even without considering vocal contributions, there's little doubt that it is Whitener who has matured most of all since the last album, apparently having decided to jettison post-grunge sonic neutrality despite Ferriera's vocal propensity toward the same. Less than a minute after dominating the mic on the grinding "After We Go," Whitener turns around and delivers some of the most inspired guitar timbres I've heard in months. Don't get me wrong, he is still entirely capable of being formidably bland when the occasionally vapid songwriting so demands, but he also does not hesitate to viciously discipline his guitar for its insolence afterward.
When the fat lady sings at the end of the 12th track, Tantric's second album has become as irresistible as it is unremarkable. As long as you are willing to admit that you like your hard rock easy to digest and just a little bit on the mindless side, "After We Go" is not to be missed. Hey Travis, suck on this one for a while. Who's laughing now?
Here's to bouncing back. Cheers.
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