Band: Saint Vitus
Album: Born Too Late
Label: SST
Year: 1986
Rating: 93%
Saint Vitus may have been the most important rock band in the world in 1986. Although their commercial prospects at the time were negligible, their moment, while it lasted, (About 1986 to 1990) had as lasting an influence and was as brilliantly powerful in its own way as any rock band's ever. Lasting from the amicable departure of original vocalist Scott Reagers (the band continued to use some of his lyrics on Born Too Late) until the more acrimonious defection of his replacement, Scott "Wino" Weinrich, Saint Vitus's classic lineup produced 3 albums, an EP and a live album. While the Replacements and Hüsker Dü charted the shark-infested waters of major label politics, Sonic Youth was busily marrying its avant garde noisescapes to the traditional rock song format and Metallica and its cronies were barreling ahead towards world domination, Saint Vitus presaged the aesthetic and ideological return of the riff to the rock form. No-wave's noise exploration and thrash metal's relentless grooves and rabid shredding may have been the most notable contributions of those bands and their respective associates to guitar music, but with the benefit of hindsight it is clear that neither of these stylistic innovations had nearly the same bearing on rock music as a whole that the return of the riff would. (As for the world of metal, which would continue to develop as a form of music distinct from rock, the re-emergence of the riff would have to wait until extreme metal bands in the early 90's had exhausted what interest there was in pushing the thresholds of speed and brutality.) Although collegiate critical darlings like the Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. would later receive much of the credit for the loud-quiet-loud dynamic that would come to swallow the rock song format whole in the coming decade, it was Vitus who most clearly predicted, by exaggerating and emphasizing the riff as an end unto itself, the shape that loudness would take. And nobody ever listened to rock because of the quiet parts.
Every alternative, grunge, hard rock and nu metal band of the 90's would come to embrace both the loud-quiet-loud songwriting philosophy as well as the focus on riff construction that Vitus had rescued. To be sure, Vitus's dirges have their antecedents, the most obvious being early Black Sabbath and other `70s proto-doom hard rock bands like Pentagram, Necromandus, Lucifer's Friend, Warhorse and Jerusalem. There were also like-minded revivalists during the 80's. Witchfinder General made overtly doomy records heavily indebted to this era a decade later during the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and Chicago's Trouble and Sweden's Candlemass were contemporaries of Vitus who, though distinctly more metallic in their embrace of neo-classical composition and histrionic vocals, were just as heavily indebted to the grooves of Master Of Reality. Even Wino's own trio The Obsessed had been hinting at a similar sound before he disbanded the group to join Vitus. Meanwhile, members of the punk/hardecore axis were slowing down their hectic tempos and letting their music breathe. Black Flag, Flipper, Across The River, The Melvins and Soundgarden are all notable in this regard. What made Vitus unique is that they were the first band to move beyond the realm of Sabbath copycats and create something wholly new. Most importantly, they played slower, and more heavily, than any band before them.
Originally flung upon unfriendly punk audiences while opening for Black Flag in the early 80's, Saint Vitus were as punk rock in attitude as a band could be. (It should be noted that these same audiences were just as hostile to Black Flag's sludgy makeover on their My War album as well.) Authentic throwbacks to an era that for most punks was a happily forgotten childhood memory, Saint Vitus were as uncool a group of guys as could be in the punker-than-thou American underground of the mid-`80s. Thier long, greasy biker hair and demim jackets drew the scorn of the nose ring and shaved head set, to say nothing of the teased hair and makeup of MTV hair metal. The truth is, they never had a chance.
Born Too Late is the purest distillation of the Vitus aesthetic. The band's attitude can best be summed up by the album's opener, the 7-minute title track. To this day, nothing matches its defiant power as a doom anthem. It is an avalanche of sound, suffocating the listener at a glacial pace. Throughout, crushing, insurmountable walls of heavily distorted guitar are tuned so low that they are subsumed into Mark Adams' bass frequencies. The song never speeds up, not even a little. Instead, it agonizingly crawls along in slow motion as Wino intones his tales of isolation with a knowing bellow that is instantly recognizable and impossible to replace.
Every time I'm on the street,
people laugh and point at me.
They talk about my length of hair,
and the out of date clothes I wear.
They say I look like the living dead,
they say I can't have much in my head.
They say my songs are much too slow,
but they don't know the things I know!
I know I don't belong,
and there's nothing that I can do.
I was born, too late,
and I'll never be like you....
Then, the band unleashes its secret weapon; lead guitarist Dave Chandler takes off on a long, highly melodic solo extrapolated from somewhere between Ron Asheton's primitive wah-fuzz freakouts and Tonny Iommi's slightly more nuanced appropriation of heavily overdriven and detuned Hendix licks. Though not particularly advanced as a technical player, Chandler possesses an extraordinarily musical sense of melody and counterpoint. As the principle songwriter of Saint Vitus, Chandler never forgot to keep his playing a component of the overall band voice, only playing the notes that needed to be played, and squeezing the maximum amount of emotional resonance out of them. His tone and sustain are masterful throughout, and frequently his playing dissolves into howling noise and feedback only to rise once again like a phoenix from the ashes with a beautiful melody line emerging from the sonic destruction surrounding it. After the final verse, Chandler again takes off on a solo, only this time it sounds like he's actually attacking his amplifiers, so jarring and physical is the effect he gets out of his battered SG.
If the rest of the album was only mediocre but for the title track, Born Too Late would still be an important record. Thankfully it is not. Although none of the other songs quite reach that level, there are gems throughout. "Clear Windowpane" ups the tempo a little and provides the band with one of their most hummable numbers and was also a frequent live favourite. Elsewhere the album is much more ominious. "Dying Inside" moves like a funeral march as Wino revels in the misery of the bottle, while "The War Starter" sports visions of global holocaust. "The Lost Feeling" alternates a groovy bassline with palls of overdriven guitar and spinechilling tales of addiction and depression straight out of Sabbath's "Hand of Doom." However, unlike Sabbath and other more indulgent hard rock bands, the ensemble playing here does not make room for any but the most minimal embellishments on the part of the players. Mark Adams keeps his playing steady and streamlined throughout while Armando Acosta's timekeeping and fills are precise and powerful. One may be tempted to dismiss the musicianship as amateurish, but to these ears it sounds highly disciplined, every player filling his role in service of the band.
Saint Vitus at their best typify the band ideal. In any rock band, the more the players' egos are subsumed into the overall voice of the band, the heavier that band may become. Saint Vitus were the heaviest band in the world for a time, and through them a direct line can be drawn through The Melvins, Cathedral, Sleep, Earth, Boris, Burning Witch, Khanate, Sunn O))) and any other purveyors of monolithic sonic destruction that have come since. Their next two albums, 1988's Mournful Cries and 1990's V continued to explore this dynamic and are almost as impressive demonstrations of power and craft, although they lack the overall level of quality songwriting and the original creative spark that made Born Too Late a truly classic album. This belongs in the collection of any music fan who has even a vague interest in heavy music.
*Note* The SST CD reissue that I own came with the 3-song 1987 Thirsty & Miserable EP also on the CD as bonus tracks. The songs here are equally as impressive as anything on Born Too Late, though maybe somewhat more sprightly in tone, and the quarter-time Black Flag cover alone is worth the price of the admission.
