Klank's new album, Numb, is a rarity in the music world--it's an album whose B-side is actually superior to its A-side. That's not really all that difficult a task--Numb's first seven songs are completely uninspiring and boring, with a false rage that wears thin very quickly. It's also mixed poorly, with the drums being far too loud and everything else sounding as if it was recorded through a wall. Worse yet, lead singer Daren Diolosa's voice has an obnoxious, whiny punk sound to it, which sounds very out-of-place in the industrial music the band plays. The title track, which could have made a fairly decent rapcore song, especially suffers from this.
The songwriting is also sub-par. Klank's major lyrical problem is that they can't decide whether they want to write clichéd Christian lyrics or clichéd anti-Christian lyrics. Diolosa bellows "You're the only reason I press on" in "So Very Real" and roars "Sometimes I think You hate me" in "God?," but the listener gets the feeling that both of these statements are half-hearted, that he doesn't mean either of them. Still, fundamentalists will most likely be greatly offended by some of the band's lyrics, most notably their use of the "d word" in "No Answers/No Reasons."
Besides the lack of sincerity, Numb's lyrics are extraordinarily trite, on the level of the worst of CCM artists:
Gotta drill it in your mind
Friends like me you'll never find
Words that cut deep like a knife
Just like brothers...down for life
("D.F.L.")
You want to know what I would do
What makes you think I even have a clue?
("No Answers/No Reasons")
I found only two songs on the album to be listenable at all: the punk/industrial "Penetrate" is rather catchy, and actually benefited from the nasal voice Diolosa uses on its chorus; and "Bleed Me Dry," an angry rapcore track, works very well also.
In the end, better production and mixing could have made Numb easier to listen to, but truthfully, Klank can't become a truly great (or even good) band until the banality of their lyrics is removed.
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