Hands -- Give Me Rest

10/10

I'm not gonna mince words here. Sometimes an album comes along and just blows everything else around it out of the water. Sometimes an album makes the listener wonder why everything can't sound like it. And sometimes an album makes a reviewer second guess all the other "tens" he's given.  Hands' Give Me Rest is that album.
Give Me Rest is a heavy album, and I don't mean musically, though it certainly has some crushing moments. The album is, essentially, a fifty-minute conversation between a man and God. As the man goes through doubt, belief, peace, conflict, and a deeper understanding of the Almighty, the listener can feel every minute. Give Me Rest is full of soul, which sets it apart from...almost everything. It is so incredibly honest in its Psalmic journey, it casts a bright light on the lack of authenticity in its musical peers. It's an honesty that anyone can feel, as I've heard several atheists praise it enthusiastically, despite its quite theistic outcome.
With that said, I can think of a short list of people who will hate this album:
1. People who can't stand any amount of screaming in their music.
2. People with awful tastes.
3. Militant atheists.
4. Christians who like to skip the book of Job and any of the Psalms David wrote when his life sucked, as they read through the Bible.
And on a final note, Hands' frontman Shane Ochsner essentially wrote and recorded everything heard on Give Me Rest, himself. Considering the equal attention every instrument gets, the quality of the instrumental performances, the quality of both the singing and screaming, and the ridiculously high quality of both the songwriting and the album sequencing, this guy needs some kind of a reward. Instead, hardly anyone will ever here this, and Hands broke up basically before Give Me Rest was even recorded. On the bright side, Ochsner has a new project, Everything In Slow Motion, and it sounds like it will be a direct continuation of the sound of Give Me Rest. Instead of posting another link to the music from Give Me Rest (I already did that at the end of 2011, when I gave it the top spot, an action I don't regret in the least), here is the latest video from Everything In Slow Motion, from their upcoming 2013 release.


2011 Facedown Records
1. I Will 4:06
2. Water 5:21
3. Cube 4:21
4. The Helix 6:35
5. Here I Am 4:11
6. Jovian 6:07
7. Northern Lights 5:17
8. 2005 5:21
9. Restart 5:21
10. Give Me Rest 7:07