STS9 - Peaceblaster REVIEW

The new Sound Tribe Sector 9 album, Peaceblaster dropped yesterday to quite a bit of internet buzz. But as a follow up to 2005's Artifact, Peaceblaster is daunted by the impossible task of 1-upping their earlier studio album. Unfortunately, Peaceblaster never really breaks free from the shadow that an album like Artifact casts.

Peaceblaster starts relatively strong with Peaceblaster '68 and '08 into Metameme and Sock Doctrine (probably the standout track on the disc) but trails off into a sound that really just confused me. If someone had turned on this album randomly, I'm honestly not sure I'd recognize it as Sector 9. And where is Lerner (the percussionist) on this whole disc? On tracks like Tokyo and Peoples (Artifact), the chemistry between he and Zach was FIRE. I struggled to find him on most of the new tracks.

As is common with S9 this album is probably just the first edition of these tracks. On the road, I wouldn't be surprised if the songs on this album blossom into something completely different. For example, the piano part at the end of Ramone and Emiglio wasn't added til much later after it first appeared on a disc. But let's hope that HB goes back to his signature style of single note solos instead of strumming distorted chords.

For the avid S9 fan, this will be a pretty much automatic purchase. But if you're new to S9 I would recommend download some various '04/'05 live shows or simply take the safe route and pick up Artifact.

STANDOUT MOMENT:
About halfway through Metameme, Zach drops into some D&B fire.

STANDOUT TRACKS: