V/A – The Killer In You: A Tribute To Smashing Pumpkins / 2006 Reignition / 11 Tracks / http://www.reignition.com / Reviewed 11 January 2006

The disc starts out with a note by note recreation of “Cherub Rock” by Trustkill’s Roses Are Red; I guess this is an okay opening, but it really hems the disc into a much more constrained range of paths at the beginning. The disc takes an unexpected turn with the out of left field choice of “Jelly Belly” by A Thorn For Every Heart. So many other tracks (singles, too) could have been chosen and to pick a track like this shows the band to be true fans. The music contained on “Jelly Belly” is in many ways similar to what graced the cover of “Cherub Rock”, in that both were fairly plain, pop-hardcore types of tracks that could easily sneak on a mTV or Clearchannel radio station.

Poison The Well’s “Soma” is another track that meanders on the slow side of things, and really seems to me to show a band trying too hard to come up with something that sounds like the Smashing Pumpkins rather than mixing their own style with a track. Emanuel is really the first band that breaks out of the spell of the Pumpkins; this Vagrant act throws emo (and maybe even a little Weezer) into the mix to create something that while slower, has some lifeline and a lack of anemia. Armor For Sleep’s “Today” is the rare example of a track that closely follows the lead of the Pumpkins while still having a life of its own; the perfect recreation of the tension originally created by Billy and the band makes for a track that should be the single of the disc.

Out of their disappointing last album, A Static Lullaby really shows some improvement with their “The Everlasting Gaze”; the mixture of screamed out vocals and distortion with a smoothed-out set of vocals is the farthest that any band gets away from the original formula. What I think was the major limiting force behind “The Killer Is You” is that Smashing Pumpkins honestly influenced many of the bands here in a way that Guns N Roses (many of the bands here were also on the Reignition Guns N Roses compilation) did not (due to the relative ages of the bands). Where many of the bands here had their own voice on the first compilation, a much smaller amount broke free of the original formula here. For fans of the Smashing Pumpkins, at least.

Top Tracks: Vaux’s 1979, Armor For Sleep’s Today

Rating: 5.2/10

[JMcQ]