Dogma -- Feeding the Future King Recordings/RAL/Mercury Records
Feeding the Future isn’t the platter you’re gonna slap on at the next birthday bash you throw (no songs about cars, chicks, good times, ect.), but with a moniker like Dogma you pretty much already khnow what you’re getting: Strident-voiced, sensitively righteous young men with an up-with-people mentality, and a heavy, whomping sound to back thier message up.
Phil Allocco and Sean Carmody’s songs brim with empathy, but don’t try to play off as trusting fools. On "Cancer," an edgy, suspicious song that hammers its point home with Helmit like glee, Allocco sneers, "I don’t have to watch my back when you’re in front of me." Problem is, it’s followed by "UnexpectedWays," an edgy, suspicious song that hammers its point home with Helmit like glee. And so on. (Praise Zeus, at least there’s no sign herein of the ubiquitous rap influences in rock these days.)
On the latter half, Dogma switch gears radically, segueing to softer, sparser works that nicely ring true, with Bob Mould-ish relationship portrayals rising above the first half’s sociopathic explorations. "Too Many People" is a standout with its folk-song-minded tale of woe, and so are "Conversations" and "Unsaid" both carefully delineated stories of personal and social maturation. On Tracks like these, Feeding the Future starts to gel.
But this New York group’s actualfuture would seem rather unclear. It’s smart, It’s well-intentioned, and it licks your hand when you pet it, but you wouldn’t hesitate to put it out in the street once the stench of familiarity got too cloying. This Dogma needs to learn new tricks in order to stave off the pound.
By Joshua Sindell