Thanks to the lo-fi revolution, increasingly affordable manufacturing, leaps in technology, and a supportive underground network, putting out an album just isn't that hard to do anymore. In fact, it's downright simple these days. A little too easy. I'm not complaining, mind you. As the big record companies continue to merge into one giant, hideous cyclops with their one eye carefully fixed on profit margins, it's important that the means to make records is readily available to little people like us. But when I'm confronted with a record as nondescript, impersonal, and inconsequential as Therefore's Khrom, I have to question why a presumably working-class musician would even bother funneling their hard earned money into such a project.

I know what you're thinking, but really, it's not that bad. Aside from some harsh bursts of static towards the beginning, there's nothing particularly displeasing about Khrom. And I'll admit that I'm not a very principled person, but I have trouble not being at least a little offended by this album on principle. The sheer sloth of it is despicable. Even the titles of the tracks are left with as little information or personality as possible, represented simply by rectangles of different colors. It really says something when the most unique and creative thing about a release is the curve of one of the corners of the front cover, which is itself a bland shade of orange with the artist name printed in black.

And the music? Well, for all I know, this disc could be the handiwork of a lousy drummer, a lousy guitarist, a lousy violinist, someone who got a sampler for his birthday, or all four. Metallic clanking, screeching strings, and droning keyboards all cross paths at random intervals with no hope of intersecting or following one another. The only time anything bearing a passing resemblance to a known genre of music rears its head is when some amp skree happens upon a pounding 4/4 beat-- and even that sounds like your run-of-the-mill punk rock dirge. This would be on Khrom's second track, which I believe is lavender. The thing is, I could probably tolerate this kind of thing under different circumstances. Say, as between-song filler by some art-damaged band like the Olivia Tremor Control, or as some pretentious side project from a member of Sonic Youth. But all in one serving, with no apology or payoff, it's just insulting. Perhaps funniest of all is the way the album's been cut up into 12 tracks over 45 minutes, in a shape that resembles song-based albums.

I would feel so much better about Khrom if the underside of the disc was green. I could rest easy under the assumption that some humble hobbyist burned a few copies on his PC and one just happened to slime its way into Pitchfork's possession-- the "001" label catalog number on the album's spine would encourage for this theory. But no, some poor fool actually footed the bill to get at least a small run of this thing manufactured. And they probably ended up giving away a number of copies to friends, who listened maybe once and then rightfully forgot about it. Which, it just so happens, is what I plan on doing right now.

-Al Shipley