It's time once again for your weekly Times x Bob Capsule Review of A New Song By a Rock and Roll Band--easily the most popular recurring feature in Times x Bob's vast catalogue of modestly successful and impactful recurring features and the predominant reason that you, Constant Reader, are always coming back.
Today we have "The Doomed" by American rock supergroup A Perfect Circle (APC), a single from the band's forthcoming 2018 album. You can listen to it here, should that be the sort of way you'd like to spend the next four-and-a-half minutes or so:
Like any APC song, the intellectual substrate of the song is far more interesting than the sounds made by the singing and the instruments. Maynard James Keenan, vocalist for both APC and Tool--Tool, of course, being an Actually Good rock and roll outfit--provides the lyrics and vocals, so while the *idea* at the core of the song is indeed better than, you know, *the song,* even that's only saying so much. Maynard's at his best--excuse me, his *ideas* are at their best when they only have to bear their own fair share of the weight. You don't want the success or failure of your song to rest on Maynard's clever insight that Modern American Christianity actually has Christianity All Wrong, is what I'm saying. THE DOOMED, eh Maynard? And the video is all of the fellas in APC looking at us, the audience? IS IT US? ARE WE THE DOOMED, MAYNARD? What of the meek, indeed?!
If you're going to be (rather prettily, it must be said) singing about how the Prosperity Gospel is bullshit, maaaannn, you'd better have some really great rock'n'roll music to offset the inherent absurd self-seriousness of your enterprise. Instead, with APC, we have Billy Howerdel writing the music. Billy Howerdel took everything he learned as a guitar tech for Nine Inch Nails, Tool, and The Smashing Pumpkins to become something like what happens when you grind up a bunch of mid-to-late 90s UPN or WB network television theme songs with the new age spiritualistic instincts of Mannheim Steamroller.
This is a bad song, is what I'm saying, and the people who made it should know it, and you should know it, too. "The Doomed" by A Perfect Circle is warmed over kabuki theater, performed by an elaborate Trans-Siberian Orchestra cover band unsure of what they're doing, exactly, but dead-goddamn-serious about doing it.
On the patented Times x Bob Capsule Review of A New Song By a Rock and Roll Band Scale, "The Doomed" by APC rates TWOpointFIVE HATES.
See you next time!