Reviewed - 08/05/04

Dove
[No Idea Records]

I like my Floor CDs like I like my women: short, heavy, and ten years old.

Well, two out of three ain't bad. Dove is definitely a heavy album and this material is ten years old, but shockingly this isn't a short CD. That's right, the band that specialized in attention deficit doom with their self-titled 2002 effort actually put some really long songs on here for a running time of fifty minutes. Technically though, this Floor CD isn't exactly a new full-length per se. As I alluded to earlier, this is actually unreleased material that was recorded way back in 1994, but for some reason, was never released.

Now, as much as I love this band, and as much as I want to love this release, Dove does have a few problems. It's obvious the band has grown significantly in the past ten years. The songwriting on their debut is far tighter and more mature. Obviously, the production is a little muddy (hey, it was '94) and that annoys me a little though it might appeal to some of you who prefer your doom as dirty as possible. But the weaker production and the more "experimental" songwriting cause a whole new problem for me. It hides a good deal of what makes this band so special. There are numerous times on this CD that you feel like you are listening to Unsane or Helmet or something. Again, I suppose that would be a plus for some of you, but not for me.

The coolest song on the album has to be the experimental title track. Dove feels like a Floor song, but at eighteen minutes, it's a teensy tiny bit longer than their average song length of three minutes. It also shows some unique elements that I didn't expect. On the vinyl version, Dove takes up the entire second side. That song would have made a cool way to end the CD, if you ask me. But they just had to screw it up. Instead of the classy ending, they go and throw in a bonus instrumental track that consists of one two-note riff repeated ad nauseam for sixteen minutes. I'm sure the guys enjoyed jamming on this one, but I don't buy CDs to hear the band practice. Sure, you can skip it, but it just doesn't belong on the album to begin with and I hate having to babysit my CDs when they are in the player to skip dumb songs.

Worse yet, if they'd just left off this song, the CD actually would be short and my opening joke would've worked better. Those fuckers.

All in all, it's still a quality release, but it pales in comparison to Floor's self-titled debut. If you're looking for a highly unique, high quality doom CD, go with the self-titled one. This one's good, but not great. (Note: one of the members of Floor is also in a band called Dove who they did a split 7" with, but this is unrelated to that band.)