How rockers Decadent Nation create a local landmark on new album
Every local music scene owns particular landmarks: the spot where an influential club sits — or once sat, the coffeeshop or bar where a band's members met and hatched plans of rock 'n' roll glory.
Bands are landmarks too. Enduring and innovative acts represent a scene at a given place and time, ensuring its place on the musical map.
Decadent Nation is among those bands for this mid-Missouri moment. The band's brand-new, self-titled album carves a monument to — and from — the sort of radio-friendly, dynamic and flexible rock 'n' roll Decadent Nation has built its reputation upon.
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The band keeps fashioning powerhouse songs from tools bestowed by post-"Core" Stone Temple Pilots and Audioslave, while owing subtle but significant debts to the likes of Tool and Rage Against the Machine. Decadent Nation's present-tense lineup — singer-guitarist Colin LaVaute, lead guitarist Devin Burrow, bassist Kyle Day and drummer Zack Blomberg — honors a generation of its forerunners while pressing ahead to create its most complete musical statement to date.
The record fulfills its very promise, opening with a 97-second detonation of scorching guitar and driving rhythm aptly named "Firecracker." From there, the band slides effortlessly into "Stone," immediately stretching the groove without forsaking any of the rock bite. LaVaute makes his melody do a snake-charmer's dance, moving with and around Burrow's guitar. Blomberg brings a special touch here, going all-out arena-rock.
The band throws its first changeup with "Turnover," a tune that bounces on the balls of its feet, threading lilting and charging rhythms together and once again allowing LaVaute to wind his melody around the beat.
Perhaps the album's true highlight, "Clarity" is LaVaute's songwriting at both its most introspective and compassionate. Not quite a ballad, not quite an anthem, it opens with darkly melodic guitars and patient rhythms that frame LaVaute's poetic confessions: "She's begging for clarity, she says to me / I said I don't know what that is / Sing my name to the night again / And call me a friend."
The song grows and storms but — to Decadent Nation's credit — never explodes, holding some of its emotional tension and leaving a realistic impression.
"Belly of the Beast" follows, a hard blues that threads the needle between Rage and Red Hot Chili Peppers guitar riffing — and a sort of secular gospel song. "We'll be judged upon / how we treat the least," LaVaute sings.
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Other highlights include the cool, buoyant guitar on "Sycophant" — a song which earns LaVaute bonus points for working the word "obsequious" into a hard-rock tune; and the vocal tag on "Creation," the band's textured, earthy harmonies sounding as Missouri as they come.
The record closes with a pair of epic rockers: the 7-plus minute "Battleship Empire" and "Lay Me Down," which clocks in at 8 minutes, 23 seconds. The latter — and last — track is thoroughly satisfying, bobbing and weaving between modern- and classic-rock aesthetics and showcasing Burrow's guitar on searing, romantic solo passages.
"Decadent Nation," the record, exists as a study in the local rock community. LaVaute and Burrow teamed up with Many Colored Death frontman and Columbia guitar hero Brent Moore to produce the album; Moore mixed it with Jack Gue, a seriously smart area musician. The album feels both lighter and denser for these contributions — the band is free to move within its circles, collecting the best possible ideas.
If and when those who come behind bands such as Decadent Nation look for a sense of the Columbia music scene as it was, they could do far worse than this record — a snapshot of one our moment's best, at their best.
Decadent Nation will celebrate the album release with a show at 6 p.m. Friday at Bur Oak Brewing Company,8250 Trade Center Dr. The Royal Furs and Down Side Up share the bill, and the evening features installations from Como Acro Yoga. Tickets are $8 in advance. Visit the band's Facebook page for more info: https://www.facebook.com/decadentnation.
Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. Find him on Twitter @aarikdanielsen.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: How rockers Decadent Nation create a local landmark on new album
