I wish I had a clone about four years younger than me. It would save me a lot of trips to the used record stores and trade-in shops. "Hey, Brent2.0! Want my Shiner and Quicksand discs?" It's not that they're bad, but I'm just a bit tired of them. And with The Deuce (as I would toyingly coin the second me), I could at least listen to those CDs every once in a while without them taking up pricy CD tower real estate. I could even give him new CDs like Pave the Rocket's Taken In. Because it's pretty much the sort of thing that would have rocked my world back in the day. It's just that now the whole, "Hey guys, let's downtune our guitars and get a drummer who wears tank top tees," thing bores me nowadays.

Pave the Rocket overtly strive for texture, mood, menace, riff- over- melody and songwriting. The guitars alternate loud and soft parts that go together like tar and feathers. The bass goes for the frequency that loosens stool. The drums beat twice as hard to be heard over the din of riffage. The songs all have those one word titles like "Anvil," "Drool," and "Facesmash."

If you like your music thick and loud and crashing and deep and heavy and discordant, Taken In is undoubtedly gonna be your sort of thing. It's just that those Shiner and Quicksand discs are still hanging around my collection and, as it stands, the 'P' section is pretty tight right now.

-Brent DiCrescenzo