From Joliet, Illinois, 30 miles from Chicago, Five Pointe O was a short-lived band that had minor success in the underground metal scene in the early 2000’s. They self-released two EPs in 1999, when their founding members were just 15 to 17 years old. Their one and only full-length album was released in 2002 by Roadrunner Records, a division of the Warner Music Group (and it’s fucking awesome).
In their time, they separated themselves from their power-at-all-costs contemporaries through their clean-voiced but extremely strong lead vocalist, by incorporating keyboards shifting between musical and machine-like, and with plenty of artsy musical dynamics.
Untitled
2002
9 out of 10
Right off the bat, this album slaps the shit out of your face while the singer’s long syllables and the keyboard’s full chords soar over you. The music has layered, sonic depth. In its most sinister moments, you get precise stutter guitar riffing, eerie high-pitched guitar accents, pounding beats that keep the rhythm while moving all over the place, and jolting stops and starts. The younger-sounding lead singer often does a call-and-response type thing with the older-sounding, gruff, doom-style backup singer. It’s like a big fat wall of evil with jagged rocks and pointy knives sticking out of it.
Songs that deviate from the style do so in their own unique ways. On “Purity 01,” there’s speedy toms and Indian guitar while the singer spits out lines like he’s in Rage Against the Machine. “Freedom?” closes on a slowed-down section driven by a crafty keyboard lead. “Sympathetic Climate Control” is also slower than the rest with a bit of emo-flavored vocals. And the nearly 12-minute finale “Aspire, Inspire” rides a meditative guitar-on-delay tune forever, then pays it off bigtime with thundering heaviness.
Twenty years after its release, this album still sounds fresh and impresses the hell out of me. It’s bursting with talent, power, and smart songwriting. What I like is that the band uses standard metal elements of their time, but they have the restraint to use them sparingly. There are straight double-bass drum rolls, but only here and there. There’s fast-as-hell, mean-as-hell riffs, but they’re all different. The vocalist has a unique talent for boisterous harmonic lines, but he doesn’t overuse them. He also seems to pour a lot of emotion into his delivery, but it’s not a typical “raw aggression” style. The band has no problem playing odd time signatures, but they generally stick with natural rhythms. The keyboard adds color and texture, but doesn’t call too much attention to itself.
You get 11 kickass songs in 52 minutes, and it’s all distinct and interesting. I don’t even necessarily care much for this genre of music, but I do love this album.
Published October 2021