Tourniquet - "Microscopic View of a Telescopic Realm"

Tourniquet - Microscopic View of a Telescopic Realm
2000, Metal Blade

1. Besprinkled in Scarlet Horror
2. Drinking From the Poisoned Well
3. Microscopic View of a Telescopic Realm
4. The Tomb of Gilgamesh
5. Servant of the Bones
6. Erratic Palpitations of the Human Spirit
7. Martyr's Pose
8. Immunity Vector
9. Indulgence By Proxy
10. Caixa De Raiva
11. The Skeezix Dilemma, Part II (The Improbable Testimony of the Pipsisewah)

I have a little history with this disc. I originally downloaded "Besprinkled in Scarlet Horror" a long, long time ago and absolutely loved it. However, I never bought the album until five or so years ago. I listened to it several times and never really got into it. After a commenter's suggestion I decided to check it out again.

Microscopic View was a return to the band's thrash roots after the commercial Crawl to China. It is thrash - good and heavy with a lot of cool interesting riffs. It's also fairly progressive with long songs and lots of influences. My main problem with this album has always been that a lot of songs sound sort of disjointed to me. The songs don't flow as well as they do on their other releases. Almost like they pulled some riffs out of a hat and put them together for a song. "Erratic Palpitations..." and "Indulgence By Proxy" are particularly guilty of this. There are a couple songs that reflect some of the groove of Vanishing Lessons, like "Martyr's Pose" and "Caixa De Raiva." Also present - a sequel to "The Skeezix Dilemma" which is an alright song but nowhere near as cool as the original. There are some songs that I just love besides "Besprinkled...". Namely, "The Tomb of Gilgamesh," "Servant of the Bones," and the aforementioned "Martyr's Pose." So the good news? I like Microscopic View a great deal more than I did previously and could appreciate a lot of what is going on here. The bad news? It still didn't "wow" me and probably won't replace the older stuff when I need a Tourniquet fix.

Useless Fact: Legend has it "Caixa De Raiva" was written by vocalist Luke Easter about former Tourniquet vocalist Guy Ritter. One of the lines says something like, "I bet you'd relish the chance at another swing at me." So... was there an actual fistfight between these two?! The mind boggles!