Review:

on 2012-02-13 CharlesMartel Said:

An album which tries to be a lot of things, "Ritual de lo Habitual" is a mixture of styles and genres. A move away from the sometimes pure rock of their other work, Jane's Addiciton have produced something for the nineties right at the start of the decade. They have influenced a whole load of other bands and continue to do so with their particular brand of alternative rock cum heavy metal. But I cannot help feeling there is madness behind the method.

There is nothing wrong with psychosis and music  plenty of artists have been troubled individuals and more than a handful have killed themselves. So perhaps, unlike many areas of life, music is one area where mental illness is not the unspeakable thing that it is elsewhere. And I suspect that there is something troubled about some or all of the individuals responsible for Jane's Addiction for there is a kind of self-destructive insanity which circles "Ritual de lo Habitual" like a ravenous pack of wolves.

Needless to say then, there are times when this delivers quite the punch, such as on tracks like "Been Caught Stealing" which is easily the best track on the album. Other tracks like "Stop" are not bad either and "Three Days" is good in places, though to be honest it goes on for far too, long. But then again there are other occasions when this album shows the negative side of madness and that is what lets it down in the end.

Perry Farrell has a voice which could strip paint from a car. It is the very definition of untrained. At first it has a sort of unique quality to it, but after a while you begin to realise that his is a voice limited in terms of what it can do. It soon becomes samey and eventually starts to annoy if you listen to it for too long. After listening to it for too long, you're left with the impression that all he does is screech and scream like someone being throttled.

Then there is the music. This ranges from the sublime to the awful and manages to do so in a very short space of time. Some of the music on the album is very good. And then the band go and wreck it by some really odd behaviour. There are some chord changes on here that are quite simply baffling. Rhythmic patterns are broken up for no reason and reassembled into something different. I am sure it is clever but it does not make for an easy listen. And that just about sums the whole album up. At times compelling, but very hard to sit through the whole thing.
Rating: 6/10