His Name Is Alive's "Tecuciztecatl": Unspeakable.

His Name Is Alive "Tecuciztecatl" [NEW & SEALED vinyl LP record]
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On their 10th studio album, and first recording of new material in six years (subtracting the sham and scam that was 2010's The Eclipse), His Name Is Alive continue to recover from the identity crisis they inflicted on themselves in the early 00's (reference 2001's Someday My Blues Will Cover The Earth as the pinnacle of this), issuing a collection here not at all dissimilar to the elocutions of 2007's Xmmer and plumbing the same feel (sorta) of 1998's Ft. Lake; though sparing the "Detroit booty rock" electronics of the latter, but harking back to the pronunciational awkwardness of the former (it's phonetically "Teh-zoo-ziz-teh-kattle", said real real fast).  As always, His Name Is Alive continue to be hellbent on making marketing and commercialization very very difficult for themselves and whatever record label might be brave enough to foster their releases. In the case of this one, it's found a home on Seattle based Light In The Attic's new London London imprint - which, if you peruse the rest of their offerings, puts His Name Is Alive in just the right place it seems... if ever there was one. 

The Tecuciztecatl album, unfortunately, seems sort of "been done" by comparison to His Name Is Alive's back catalog.  That's especially disappointing for a band who have been so historically consistent in delivering remarkably interesting, disparately square peg albums.  So with the sort of resume they have, one might have expected this to be another bold and exciting new addition to their wholly pretty damn interesting catalog.  The potential for it is there, the marketing editorials surrounding it certainly make it sound hopeful - what, with terms like "rock opera" and "horror movie soundtrack vibe".  Ultimately, however, Tecuciztecatl falls significantly short of all of that, coming off instead a little fragmented, a tad repetitive.  In His Name Is Alive's younger years, they did quite well creating abstract sound conglomerate albums 

(reference their 1990 debut Livonia), that could be taken ala carte, but were much more properly absorbed in their entirety as textured soundscapes that segued from one song to the next.  They once upon a time did that really, really exceptionally well - but here... here it just comes off a bit tedious, a tad uninspired... and a lot boring. 

Missing seems to be the "found sounds" silent frontman/mastermind/engineer Warren Defever used to imbed into His Name Is Alive's work. The creepy whispers in Livonia, the shrill creature or animal shriek in "There Something Between Us And He's Changing My Words" on Home Is In Your Head, the woman sobbing "they're gonna take me to the insane asylum" inserted at the end of "Jack Rabbits" on Mouth By Mouth - the ticking clocks, the air compressor blasts, the birds chirping, the weird amped out squiggling metal sounds, even the haunted lyricism that speak only and strictly from the disposition of supernatural knowing and presence  - they're all missing here, but they're all so significant to what has become the most beloved elements of the atmosphere His Name Is Alive has proven themselves quite adept at enveloping.  And while it's true the band deviated from these claims to their initial fame long ago, this album seemed to promise a return to that. Everything about it would have been so very conducive to it... "a psychedelic rock opera depicting an epic struggle between identical twins, reflective in nature and mirrored in twin science, secret language and mythology..." Those are the words verbatim from the Tecuciztecatl marking material... so where the fuck is it?

To say His Name Is Alive have gotten lazy would be dismissive. This is by no means a lazy effort. It's clear the band had every expectation this album would have been received much differently, even if their promotional material was, to say the least, over-imaginative.  Tecuciztecatl's shortcomings amount to HNIA simply not living up to the unexpected this time around... or even the expected for that matter, paradoxical as it might sound.  The sum of all these parts, in the end, serve only to leave Tecuciztecatl as frustrating to listen to as it is to pronounce.