listened to a lot of Helmet, Quicksand and Unwound in high school. Being too socially retarded to make friends, yet not miserable enough to consider suicide seriously, I spent evenings wallowing inside angry, dreary and monolithic paeans to human duplicity. The bands, along with Shellac (whom I didn't encounter until college), attained a very specific emotional niche in the harder-indie realm by trading melody and pure aggression for broken rhythms, dissonant chords, and lyrical disgust. The sound complemented my lifestyle exceedingly well; it screamed "leave me the fuck alone, you bastards" right alongside my wardrobe, tone of voice, and tact-free speech.


The three members of Technician continue this contemptuous tradition, faithfully carrying the torch for their defunct and inactive forebears. To get technical about it (no pun intended), their sound is something like 25% Helmet, 5% Unwound, and 70% Shellac. This last ingredient is crucial: the vocalist appropriates Albini's vocal inflections and sounds just like the guy, the drummer may as well be Todd Trainer himself (but she's not), and over half the guitarist's riffs and/or motifs are tweaks from At Action Park. So yeah, it's formulaic, but rarely has this type of music been executed so competently and satisfyingly, plus Technician wins points for their admirable and infrequently-imitated influences.


I've found that this record works best when you disregard its authorship completely and allow yourself to think of it as a Shellac record. If you heard any of these tracks on college radio, that's probably who you'd guess it was, and I don't see much wrong with that. Fact is, I like Opposition better than 1000 Hurts anyway: it offers better, more effective riffs and arrangements, and the slogan "I'll make you sick like you make me sick" (from "The Moment We've All Been Waiting For") is almost as perversely catchy as "Kill him/just fucking kill him."


Steve Albini engineered this record. The inevitable critical comparisons to his own power trio couldn't have been lost on him, but he nevertheless shellacked Opposition with the same sonic bleakness he reserves for himself. The sound is that of a poorly-oiled rock machine, lurching and cranking out discrete chunks of ugly, unrefined noise for misanthropic mass consumption. And while that's certainly nothing new, Technician plies its trade very well, and in a musical arena with few competitors it's more than good enough.