Uniform – American Standard
Sacred Bones
Some light verse from the pen of Uniform vocalist Michael Berdan:
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“I am filth / And I am failure”
“You can’t begin to take back / what you have already done”
“You found my love appalling”
On American Standard, the New York neo-industrial band’s shockingly great fifth LP, Berdan confronts a decades-long struggle with bulimia, a disease that is more pervasive in men than once assumed.
Compulsive behavior is a tricky thing—the urge to control one’s environment, one’s body, one’s experience is primal for humans. And anyone who has done time in a 12-step meeting can tell you that self-loathing is a hell of a drug in itself. But Berdan and his longtime musical partner Ben Greenberg, along with bassist Brad Truax and drummers Mike Sharp and Michael Blume, avoid such vanity, their music obliterating the line between Skinny Puppy’s electronic psychosis and the sludge of Swans.
The album is divided in two halves. Built on a cyclical riff that mimics both the exhaustion that comes from putting your body through something most folks avoid and the curse of countless relapses, the title track is a 21-minute symphony of sickness, the sound of being crushed by a disease. Covered in filth, “American Standard” concludes with revelation, a breakthrough as it drills into the childhood roots of Berdan’s personal hell.
The second half confronts something equally troubling—this disease’s effect on the victim’s loved ones. Both drummers thunder away on “This Is Not a Prayer” as Berdan reflects on the paradox of eating disorders—the worse he looks, the better it’s working. “Clemency” is the sort of Godflesh-y industrial metal for which Uniform has become well regarded, while the concluding “Permanent Embrace” reengages the double drums and guitar washes for a look at the maximum codependency that mixes itself up with genuine love and affection.
From the vulnerability in Berdan’s scream to the elegant (no, really) arrangements, American Standard is never corny or contrived. It’s the year’s most intimate, most savage feel-bad music. – GRADE: A
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