The Texas rock band Toadies have returned seven years after their last album and 13 years since their commercial breakthrough, but as No Deliverance ably demonstrates, that time away has done nothing to blunt the group’s chugging guitars or frontman Vaden Todd Lewis’s jaundiced worldview. A tuneful, pulverizing collection of miserable love songs, No Deliverance has more in common with the alternative-rock landscape of the 1990s than the contemporary scene, but the album’s intensity and passion keep this from feeling like a nostalgia piece.
A Blast From the Past
Toadies came to prominence on their 1994 debut Rubberneck and its single “Possum Kingdom,” which made them MTV darlings the following year. But label interference delayed the group’s second album, 2001’s Hell Below/Stars Above, effectively destroying any momentum Toadies once had. The band broke up and Lewis pursued music outside the group. But now with Toadies reunited, No Deliverance offers a glimpse of what might have been for this once-hot band, although there’s no sense of misty-eyed melancholy or regret on the album’s raw 10 tracks. Toadies were always known for stinging songs fueled by Southern-style blues rock, and the lengthy hiatus has only sharpened Lewis’s rage. But he doesn’t sound bitter – if anything, his anger is liberating.No Happy Endings
As its title suggests, No Deliverance deals in stories without happy endings. In a typical scenario, Lewis (or a fictional first-person narrator) is locking horns with a girlfriend who’s either unfaithful or leaving him. Normally, such a narrow lyrical focus can lead to repetition or a worry that the songwriter has so many women troubles because he’s actually a raging misogynist, but Clark Vogeler’s punchy guitar work and Lewis’s compelling vocals (balanced between snarled attacks and soulful singing) make No Deliverance a harrowing ride through some dark alleys of the soul. It’s the sort of album you can imagine a jilted ex cranking while he or she is barreling down the road, trying to forget a heartless lover.Twisted, Tense Songs
Musically, the tracks on No Deliverance are either out-of-the-gate rockers or mid-tempo tunes that start softly and then explode into fiery choruses. Lewis shows he hasn’t lost his skill with these two song styles: “Nothing to Cry About” is all spiteful putdowns and burning riffs, while “Song I Hate” rides a melodic guitar figure until it morphs into an anguished lament about the inability to let go of a self-destructive partner. Back on Rubberneck, Toadies distinguished themselves from other angst-rockers by being truly twisted in their love songs. (“Possum Kingdom,” for example, could be interpreted as a romantic ode to murdering your true love.) No Deliverance continues in that tradition by suggesting pessimistically that all love is fleeting, soon replaced by distrust and insecurity. The tense, tangled guitars all over the album reflect those twitchy emotions, creating a series of songs that sound like brawling arguments and tortured inner monologues.Welcome Back, Toadies
No Deliverance hits shelves at a time when alt-metal and post-grunge bands are in fashion, so where does that leave Toadies? Probably struggling to find an audience, unfortunately. But while there’s no song on No Deliverance as instantly catchy as “Possum Kingdom,” it’s a stellar album filled with great moments. The tracks may be populated by angry lovers, but Toadies attack the songs with such energy that you’d swear the band members are having a ball playing them.Best Tracks:
“I Am a Man of Stone”“One More”
“Song I Hate”
“Nothing to Cry About”
Release date – August 19, 2008
