Jason Aalon keeps fighting the good fight on FEVER 333’s overdue second album DARKER WHITE.
Righteous indignation burns through DARKER WHITE. Make no mistake, you can practically feel the heat as FEVER 333’s firebrand frontman Jason Aalon rages against police violence on NO HOSTAGES or laments the loss of Palestinian life on the pulsating MURDERER. In 2024, apathy has become more dangerous than outright evil. Artists willing to speak up and use their platform – opening the floodgates for a tidal swell of conservative trolls and bone-headed ‘Go woke, go broke!’ commentators – deserve to be celebrated and heard.
Circumstances aren’t ideal to achieve maximum impact, however. While it feels they’ve been ever-present online and in the live arena, this is still only FEVER 333’s second album, five years on from 2019 debut STRENGTH IN NUMB333RS, and four from extended EP Wrong Generation. Songs like NEW WEST ORDER and BULL & A BULLET contain no shortage of vitriol, but in an era of sub-24-hour news cycles, raging about injustices months and years after the fact feels compromised – or stale.
The extended gestation seems to have softened the musicality somewhat, too. High sheen cuts TOURIST, DESERT RAP and DOA lose any sense of underlying grit, while experimentation with sounds from soul and trap can’t match the impact of punk rock or old-school hip-hop. And there’s the small matter of next year’s reunion/farewell shows from Jason’s world-beating other band letlive. You could be churning out weapons grade protest music, but that’s not a comparison you want to invite.
Taken on its own terms, though, there’s a lot of fun to be had here. As they’ve already proven onstage, new drummer Thomas Pridgen, bassist April Kae and guitarist Brandon Davis bring a spring loaded energy that translates compellingly on HIGHER POWER and $WING. NOSEBLEEDS already feels destined to be an epic festival sing-along. And hearing Jason deliver his finest early-2000s Eminem impression on twangy, irreverent closer MOB MUSIC PT 2 is worth the price of admission alone.
Perhaps not enough to set the world ablaze, but DARKER WHITE should change it at least a little bit.
Verdict: 3/5
For fans of: Rage Against The Machine, Linkin Park, letlive.
DARKER WHITE is released on 4 October via Century Media/333 Wreckords
