Worship and Tribute

AMG Review of Worship and Tribute

William Ruhlmann
All Music Guide

Glassjaw changes personnel slightly and moves up to major label Warner Bros. Records from Roadrunner for its second album, Worship and Tribute. But the band's musical approach remains the same, which is to say it is a showcase for lead singer and lyricist Daryl Palumbo. Palumbo, like his greatest influence, Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction, wants to use the heavy metal format as a soapbox for his views. While the band tries to work up a head of steam, pummeling and roaring through conventional metal passages, Palumbo interrupts the flow with a series of alternate strategies. "We are the most impassioned ugly people," he declares in "Cosmopolitan Bloodloss," and he justifies that statement in terms not always so articulate in his other lyrics. Disaffected from the complexities of life, he is not so much enraged as bitterly amused, and he responds by repeating puns (e.g., "Denial is a river in Egypt," in "Trailer Park Jesus") or quoting his influences ("Life is such a ball/I run the world from City Hall," sung in "The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports," is a line from Frank Zappa). This is, perhaps, the worship and tribute he has in mind. Musically, the group shows far more versatility than most of its metal peers, perfectly willing to slow the tempo, replicate the sound of a field recording, or let Palumbo pretend to be a sports announcer if he likes. And that helps make them more interesting than their metal peers. Glassjaw can pound it out like the best of them, but the fun comes in never knowing what variation the band will throw in next.