GOD LIVES UNDERWATER – Up Off The Floor

Out of misery’s darkness comes light; and in some instances sound. A sound that many believed would never come. Six years after their Life in the So-Called Space Age release, God Lives Underwater (GLU) pick themselves Up Off The Floor with their latest release on Megaforce records.

A lot can happen in six years. David Reilly and Jeff Turzo, the heart and soul of GLU, experienced an eternity of anguish and frustration in that time; starting with the collapse of their former label, the death of David’s fiance, and his subsequent trip into drug addiction and bankruptcy. The story reads more like an ending than a beginning. But with the release of Up Off The Floor, GLU have risen like the proverbial Phoenix from the ashes with a disk that embraces the turmoil and agony of their journey with raw ubiquitous energy and life.

Of course, the dark meanderings of one’s downward journey into oblivion are explored here as are the fundamentals of frustration and self-loathing, keeping in form with their prior releases. In “Slip to Fall,” the lyric “I’m to blame for all of the things that went wrong” doesn’t require a lot of imagination to understand the feelings of the author. GLU convey that Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson separatist attitude that thrives in the bleak and burned out ruins of society’s underbelly, but serve it up on whole new platter. The keyboard and electronic sounds still thrive within the contents of these songs, but the attitude by which they are driven has sharply taken a more definitive direction. And that direction is rock … lots of guitar-driven, bass-thumping, soul-searing rock!

In particular, the tracks “White Noise” and “Tricked” come straight at you with heavy guitar riffs and enough back beat to get even the most discerning listener tapping their foot and nodding along in time. More than half of the songs here are up-tempo despite their soul-cleansing lyrical trip through internal wastelands. There are never any moments where the electronic noises or keyboards threaten to take the song into a mosaic moment of spacey limbo. The musical textures are there to keep the sound fresh and modern, but they don’t take away from the melody and straightforwardness of the songs.

If you have preconceived notions about GLU, you’re only going to be half right about them. Yes, they display masochistic tendencies in their lyrics, and yes, they create a barrage of industrial-like sounds that weave in and out of the speakers like an electronic serpent on a mission of resistance. But despite the trappings of labels and stereotyping, Up Off The Floor can’t be categorized as Electronica or Industrial; but to quote Billy Joel, “Everybody’s talkin’ ‘bout the new sound, funny, but it’s still Rock ‘N’ Roll to me!”