Course of Empire
Initiation (Zoo) (STAR)(STAR)
Course of Empire, a five-man Dallas outfit, is like a lot of booming rock bands that issue a clarion call for the revolution of misfits. The band’s second album serves a good measure of tight ensemble performances but wallows on a few tracks with the usual destruction-is-around-the-corner lyrical cliches. The hard-driving, enmeshed guitar and bass licks of Mike Graff and Paul Semrad, respectively, and two-drum double-whammy from Michael Jerome and Chad Lovell beat along with the persistence of termites. “Invertebrate” is suitably reptilian from the lobster-rock school-and with Vaughn Stevenson’s overdub yammering it has all the levity of a Black Sabbath tune. “Infested” brings an illusory conversation with Charles Darwin as Stevenson chants “The weak fall out,” an observation of his survival of the fittest.
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