Beautiful Loneliness, the collected works of Travail, has all the sonic form of Korn and a dozen other trend-metal acts put through a particularly unforgiving CCM meat-grinder. The songs are all fairly indistinct from one another, most being a hodgepodge of crudely mashed hip-hop beats, down-tuned guitar, hardcore aggression and other assorted nu-metalisms. Vocalist Matt has a predictable range, from a pseudo-comic whine, to a Jonathan Davis roar that shows some potential. Unfortunately, he has little solid musical support. Song structures are weak, the rhymes are clumsy and the instruments pack all the punch of flat coke. Simply put, there is nothing remarkable or even memorable.
Worse still are the lyrics. The devil-bashing in "A Song for My Friend" is comically grating enough ("We can't fall with the devil/ Got to whack him with a shovel"), but this descends into the awkward Sunday-school couplets of "Devastated," which sacrifice any intelligent connection with the listener in favor of simple rhymes:
A selfish man by God was sent to the great Nineveh
Preaching to repent
To be destroyed in 40 days if not turning from their wicked ways
A false belief by all displayed
Compassionate God, His wrath delayed
Elsewhere, Travail try their hand at metaphor, which results in the absurdly funny lines from "And So I Was Thinking:"
There's a dead cat in a box
On the ground beside me
Is it a metaphor of my flesh
In this house of ill repute
Or is it just a dead cat in a box
On the ground beside me
With no meaning at all
In a world that has no meaning
The best lyrics on the album are the opening lines of "When I Fall" that, by abandoning the corny rhymes and devil-bashing of elsewhere, make a simple but powerful connection:
When I fall are your hands waiting for me
Just before I hit the ground
Or are you sick of me doing the same thing
Over and over again that your anger bleeds from you
Like an open wound
Unfortunately, this mutates into a teeth-grating tribute to Luti-Kriss and an unnamed girl back home, awash with poor grammar and forced rhymes. Music as derivative and third-rate as this can't compete with even the poorest rock acts in the mainstream.
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Other coverage for this album
HM Magazine #89Reviewed by Doug Van PeltEver since their days of gigging around Texas with bands like Within and Embodyment, Travail has promised to deliver the nu sound of metal. Anchor Of My Soul, which originally went on CD in 1998, was re-packaged and re-released in 1999 by Pluto (with the added song "Beaten," which coincidentally sounds strangely familiar to Gryp's "Ungrateful"), has now received another packaging facelift, been…Similar sounding releases
2002BloodletThree Humid Nights in the Cypress Trees
1999Society's FinestPrivate Conflicts and Suicides
1999P.O.D.The Fundamental Elements of Southtown
1998KornFollow the Leader
1999GrypIndecision
1998SoulflySoulfly
