Dredg -- Leitmotif

6/10

This may alienate some of my younger readers, but I know of only one way to accurately describe Dredg's debut album, Leitmotif.
In the late 90's and 00's, almost every college campus featured an experimental/alternative rock band that all of the music nerds would get excited about. We would go to every one of their shows, and talk about how insanely talented the guitar player was, and how he was so good, he was impossible to impress, how the bassist was incredible and got better every show, how the drummer's antics made the whole set, and how the singer was pretty good, but difficult to understand. The attendee's of each show would smile and nod at each other at the start of each song. The band was probably influenced by Tool, though not necessarily just a clone of them. Sometimes the band showed continued progression (Our's did, and they were awesome to begin with). Sometimes the band made it big.
Dredg have done pretty well for themselves. But before they did, they released this album, which sounds exactly like a very early show by the kind of band I just described, in a college campus dive bar, attended by some nerdy college students and some older, gruffer music fans smiling and nodding at each other in appreciation of the fact that this band is raw, but could possibly be awesome some day. Just like the previous sentence.
And it sounds like this:


1998 Interscope Recordings
1. Movement I: @45° N. 180° W 4:23
2. Lechium 1:01
3. Movement II: Crosswind Minuet 6:24
4. Traversing Through the Arctic Cold, We Search for the Spirit of Yuta 1:32
5. Intermission 6:37
6. Movement III: Lyndon 3:07
7. Penguins in the Desert 4:13
8. Movement IV: RR 2:59
9. Yatahaee 3:44
10. Movement V: 90 Hour Sleep 20:20