Stemage, Strati

Stemage bills itself as “Metroid Metal,” and I have no freakin’ idea what that means. It must be an inside joke, especially since Stemage is the creation of Grant Henry. Mr. Henry plays all the instruments, writes all the lyrics, and does all the singing. Music-wise, Strati wavers from math-rock to very average Buzz band rock to avant garde-ness that would make Buckethead proud. Since this is a one-man band, all the praise and criticism must be directed at one guy. Grant Henry obviously has a fertile and creative mind for music that few possess.

Three of the 11 tracks are instrumentals, and the tracks that do have vocal include long instrumental passages. The first track, “Star Ninety-Six,” is an instrumental that sounds eerily like a Metallica song — thankfully from when they were good. Henry also shows his guitar virtuoso admiration by imitating the duality of Paul Gilbert’s pop star/shredder identity on “Fabulous Fabulist.” Actually, all of the tracks sound great, musically. Each track seems to have its’ own personality and complexity, from soft passages to very complex heaviness and then on to average-yet-still-engaging radio rock.

Where Strati takes a downturn is in the vocal department. The vocals go from bad emo to bad ballads to just plain bad. Grant Henry’s voice drones so much that it should have a bomb strapped to it and be flying out over Iraq. Strati is like a great comic book with bad art or a great movie with Jessica Alba. One part’s so great but the other part’s so God-awful that it may render the other moot. What a conundrum.