The description The Resonance Association have written for themselves on their Myspace page begins thusly: ”Lauded in post-industrial, progressive and mainstream rock press alike, with Clarity In Darkness, The Resonance Association cements its position at the forefront of dark progressive music with its wildly eclectic third album, Clarity In Darkness.” How’s about we play a game and let’s see how many things we can find wrong with this statement of self-importance! After about half-an-hour of searching around these here interwebz, I have found a scant handful of articles written about The Resonance Association, presumably by friends who were tied to a chair and then forced to listen to this thing. I’m sorry, but your fat, metal-head neighbor who happens to have a blog doesn’t count as “mainstream press.” Strike one. What’s next? How about the needless repetition of their album title. Forget the fact that the grammatical error this causes makes the sentence virtual gibberish, but apparently The Resonance Association thought the play on opposing concepts was so goddamn clever it needed to be mentioned twice. “Ha ha, get it, because it’s impossible to find clarity in darkness because it’s hard to see things in the dark! This shit is genius, mates!! *SNORT*” Strike two. Now we hurry our way down the list to the most infuriatingly stupid thing generated by this sentence, the idea that Clarity In Darkness posits these clowns at the forefront of anything. Strike-fucking-three.

It should be obvious that their influences probably don’t include Humble Pie. It comes as no surprise that the product of such shameless self-promotion is, go figure, not memorable or exciting in the least! The Resonance Association is yet another in a long line of cookie cutter, electronically influenced rock bands that operates under the assumption that long, drawn out songs with repeated sounds and phrases are automatically, “like, totally epic, dude!” I imagine the conversation between Daniel Vincent and Dominic Hemy, the two brilliant minds behind The Resonance Association, that occurred regarding this matter went a little something like this:

Vincent: “Hey, Hemy my boy, how is the audience going to know they should be swept away by the grandeur of our masterpiece when the music is so meek and dull it would put a sugar-buzzed child to sleep?”
Hemy: “Well, let’s just make the record relentlessly long. That’s what Zeppelin did.”

There you go, How To Make An Epic Rock Album 101. Yes, with a copy of Pro Tools and a lack of imagination, you too can have your very own doomy, gloomy rock band! Case in point, “Medal Of Dishonour,” a song just as idiotic and lumbering as its title would lead you to believe. In fairness, I can see what they were trying to do here, good ol’ Vincent and Hemy wanted to make something threatening and foreboding. Problem? It goes absolutely nowhere, it’s just the same guitar chords awash in a sea of reverb for seven unbearable minutes until the song just ends exactly where it started, no tension, no release, no nothing. A tossed off Skinny Puppy b-side is deeper and has more bite than this, pun goddamn intended. Compared to these knuckleheads, Skinny Puppy are the crowned kings of subtlety.

In recent times, the music biz has been abuzz with the possibilities of free online distribution. Fans are making a big fuss over what a positive change it can bring and how it will make great music easier to find and access. It is, in theory, a great thing and we should all be happy to be living in an age of convenience. It is becoming more of a reality, however, that instead of receiving great music, we’re all going to be under the deluge of hundreds of drab Resonance Associations. We have to stop this problem at its source, so I am going to start a petition to block Internet access to any and all mopey, Trent Reznor-inspired college dropouts. People, this is a state of emergency and we have to act now! In the meantime, I wish The Resonance Association the best in their dream pursuit of one day opening for Orgy. I believe they’ve got it in them.

Track List:
1. Dangerous Fantasist
2. Medal Of Dishonour
3. Magick Is The Science
4. Heart Of Chaos
5. How To Recognise Angels
6. Pearlescence
7. Clarity In Darkness