As the musical universe continues to break off into ever-smaller subsets, the desire to classify becomes ever greater. Some bands, though, defy labeling and refuse to be pinned down, disdaining stylistic parameters. Portland, Maine's 6gig is one of those bands.
True, 6gig has an intense sound that is frequently described by reviewers as aggro or nu-metal, along with a thoughtful lyric/thematic approach often tagged as emo, and these characterizations are valid, as far as they go. But according to singer/guitarist Walt Craven, they're beside the point. "We don't even try to be one way or the other," Craven says of the aggro/emo duality. "We just write the sort of music that we'd want to listen to ourselves. Being labeled doesn't really help the band, and it also shortchanges the listener. It has nothing to do with music."
6gig's fiercely unselfconscious, play-it-as-it-lays approach, already evident on their largely self-made 2000 debut album, Tincan Experiment, which contained the Active Rock breakout 'Hit the Ground,' is a blast of fresh air in this prefab, soundalike era. The band's inventive, spirited sound caught the ear of a kindred spirit, big-time producer Matt Wallace, when Ultimatum GM John Loken played some tracks for him. Captivated by 6gig's adventurous musicality, Wallace leapt at the chance to produce the follow-up. For the members of 6gig, working with the studio virtuoso, whose extensive and varied body of work includes the Replacements, Faith No More, Maroon 5, H2O, Deftones, and Sugarcult, was a revelation. "When you write," says Craven, "you get so attached to certain things that it's hard to separate yourself from the work. Having a set of ears that are objective is key;bringing new ideas to the table that the band hadn't thought of. Matt brought a ton of record-making experience to the table;lots of ideas and advice. We loved it." Tincan Experiment was recorded all over the map in an elongated, patchwork process, while Mind Over Mind took little more than two months from tracking to mixing. Craven feels that the new album "has more of a flow and concept to it. Doing Tincan Experiement piece by piece made it feel like it was incomplete in some sort of way. Plus, Mind over Mind was written all at once, over a period of a month and a half, where Tincan Experiment was written over the course of about two years."
According to Craven, the title of the new album refers to "staying out of your own way. Using your intuition to make decisions. Not feeling guilty about your decisions. Which all leads to being a happier person. Take what life gives you, make no excuses, be responsible and live the way you want to-no guilt." Few bands as heavy as 6gig can boast a singer as contemplative as Craven; it's this hotwiring of polarities that makes the band so fascinating, and its sound so emotionally, as well as musically, powerful. When, for example, Craven expresses a son's bitter torment after the death of his abusive father in 'Proud,' the band possesses the musical muscle to express that bitterness in lacerating fashion. Considering 6gig's primally hard-soft, yin-yang nature, Mind Over Mind boasts startling musical and emotional diversity, from the confrontational thunder of opening track 'Whose Side Are You On?,' whose corrosive, in-your-face buzz line is "The things that you do disgust me," to the starkly bittersweet acoustic lament, 'Say Goodbye,' which zooms in on the fragile cusp of a breakup. Apart from the latter, the tracks grind threateningly, but there's always acrobatic aerial combat going on above the din. Bassist Craig Weaver and drummer Dave Rankin provide the album's thunder, while Steve Marquis and Craven's inventive, effects-heavy guitar work generates the lightning, as with the zig-zag stitching over massive slabs of power chords on the pulverizing 'Free' and the arcing filigrees that enhance the thrills on the anthemic 'Deadbeat.' More often than not, the music shapes itself into surprisingly tuneful hooks that overtly poppy bands would kill to come up with. In the middle of it all are Craven's raspy, fallen-choirboy's tenor, resonating with accusation, vulnerability and roiling ambivalence, and his oblique, impressionistic lyrics, which crystallize into resolving lines of forceful clarity. "Sometimes I elaborate or exaggerate, but it's all taken from something I've experienced or witnessed," Craven confirms. "You have to feel some sort of emotion yourself before you can expect to express it in song and have others feel that emotion." In fact, the lyrics are the final piece of the puzzle in 6gig's creative process. Typically, a bandmember brings an idea to the table‹it could be a riff or a groove-then the band proceeds to bang on it until that germ of an idea expands into the spine of a song. After the band records these collective concoctions, Craven writes the lyrics and melodies, which the band then tweaks until the song is complete. "It's about the evolution of ideas," Craven says.
At this point, the members of 6gig have every reason to be elated, but their excitement is tempered by anguish. Not long after the album was completed, Rankin decided to go his own way; he was replaced by Jason Stewart from Portland band Twitchboy. On May 27, 2002, Rankin was found dead in his home. When they learned of their former cohort's death, the band vowed to carry on in his memory-and that is exactly what they're doing. Mind Over Mind, along with 6gig's incendiary live performances, should bring the band the attention it deserves.
sit ubu, sit. good dog!
