Chingalera: In the Shadow of the Black Palm Tree

Tool is one of the most influential metal bands of our time. It’s also one of the hardest to imitate, as evidenced by Los Angeles trio Chingalera. The band fails mightily in its attempt at a Tool-like progressive metal epic with its debut, In the Shadow of the Black Palm Tree, then waits around for the tomatoes to fly.

The riffs that open “Trust Us True Believers” and “O.T.B.D.” are decent, but the members of Chingalera take their sweet time doing nothing with them -- no number of minute textural variations can excuse two ten-minute treatments on a single riff. “Black Palm” is more varied but totally aimless, and its corny lyric “A shady place for shady people” limps in only after the post-boredom eight-minute mark.

Without the requisite chops or smarts to focus its instrumental sprawl, In the Shadow of the Black Palm Tree comes off as flabby and immature. Not even a gritty Steve Albini recording job can save this one.

***

Band: http://www.myspace.com/chingalera

6 Responses

January 8, 2008 at 2:19 a.m.

narfish

3.0 out of 10

Don't most people get tired of using the word "shady" at, like, fifteen?

January 8, 2008 at 2:27 a.m.

yung_daba

review uses "shady" too much.

January 17, 2008 at 5:49 p.m.

Marcus

I'm calling bullshiite on your review. This doesn't sound like a bad tool imitation. I'll give you that the lyrics are a bit trite, but they're not exactly the focus of the album. If anything, it sounds like the sludge metal of Sleep or maybe a slowed down Kyuss. The repeated riffs are more reminiscent of Krautrock.

You obviously haven't listened to anything beyond tool, so you classify everything of this genre as "tool knockoffs".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sludge_metal

try that out.

January 17, 2008 at 9:43 p.m.

ehalpern

I didn't listen to this album, but just let it be said that Mr. Rosenbloom seems pretty darned knowledgable about metal bands beyond Tool. Just look at his other reviews.

January 17, 2008 at 10:29 p.m.

narfish

3.0 out of 10

Heh...thanks for both the yeas and nays.

Marcus, you're of course entitled to your opinion, but if you're going to criticize me for my lack of metal knowledge, do your own homework: neither Sleep or Kyuss could be classified as sludge. They both fall more under the "stoner rock/metal" category, and lack the pained vocal delivery, nasty feedback and monolithic riffing of sludge bands like Eyehategod, Grief, Noothgrush, even the Melvins. And why bring up Krautrock?You really think that Chingalera was listening to Kraftwerk when they were recording this? Krautrock tends to use repetition for icy detachment...Chingalera uses repetition more as a basis of textural buildup (which I don't think they do particularly well).

There were riffs on the Chingalera album that sounded exactly like Tool circa Opiate to me, and a lot of the way that the guitarist will play the same riff but alter his tone over the course of ten minutes is very similar to what Adam Jones does. The band compares itself to Tool and King Crimson (a huge influence on Tool) in press releases. And while I recognize that Tool isn't the only band that writes long metal songs, it felt to me like they were attempting an epic on Tool scale but didn't have the...erm...tools to do so.

March 17, 2008 at 1:53 p.m.

Wow i didn't know i could loose all respect for someone i never have even met that fast. Etan
Rosenbloom is obviously is a fat kid, metaphorically speaking....if its not over produced and doctored up he probably doesn't have the mental capacity to absorb the true music. fcking moron critics, just fcking swallow a bullet for fck sake.

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