Full Scale – Self/Titled

Full Scale – Self/Titled / 2005 Atlantic / 12 Tracks / http://www.fullscale.co.au / http://www.columbiarecords.com / Reviewed 16 March 2005

Um, okay... Full Scale is a mixture of Insane Clown Posse and Chevelle, more rap-rock than anything that has came out since Kid Rock. The guitar riffs that open up “Empty Texas” are iconic and deliberate; there is no room for finesse when the band lays down lines that will smash a listener over the head. Chances are that tracks like “Empty Texas” will be put on “annoying” rotation: you know, when they play the track once every hour until you throw your radio out the window. Ezekiel’s vocals are some of the only things that forces this disc into a position that keeps the disc from stagnation; eir’s spat-out vocals on “Feel It” really pull the track out from mediocrity that the Buckethead-esque guitars seem to try to create. The tracks gradually begin to morph into one another, with “Smile” taking a Three Doors Down vocal sneer and infuses the same type of rap that has been the crux of the disc up to that point .

To appeal to their younger fan, Ezekiel draws together a Scott Stapp set of vocals with an overblown sense of teenage angst in “16 Today”, which one knows will go will break it big as soon as some young dunce tries to look up sixteen-year old large lady porn and finds the track. The influence of Bob Marley (even if it is tempered through 311 and Sublime) is one that cannot be ignored; however clichéd the guitar lines on this self-titled albums may be, the political bent of the band is something to be lauded. Even if the messages are fairly blunt (Empty Texas, The Sickness), the fact is that Full Scale’s music is making their listeners think. The sheen that is placed on this disc by the production and mastering makes the music contained almost plastic; everything feels sequenced by a computer instead of being played by Crutey, Jimmy, and Robkaay.

One major amount of props have to go to Full Scale during “The Heimlich Maneuver”, where the chorus continually comes back to the line “I’ll fuck you with a strap-on”. Going back to the political aspect of the band, the fact that they are on a major label and were able to petition for the ability to have this song on their CD shows to me a type of backbone that is not shown amongst the fairly bland guitar lines that make their presence throughout the CD.

Top Tracks: The Sickness, Empty Texas

Rating: 5.3/10