"I've heard Today Is the Day being referred to as everything from grindcore, to sludge, to "experimental", to noise, to progressive and everything in between, but after having finally heard them with this double album, the only label I can place on them is "pretentious crap". It's unfortunate, really, since there are some strokes of brilliance scattered across these two CDs, but the band just can't seem to develop any kind of consistency or momentum, which ultimately renders this 2-hours-plus of music extremely boring.

It's really not at all unfathomable that Mastodon, an incredibly and consistently fun band, was spun off from Today Is The Day. After all, a lot of the more progressive riffing heard on Sadness Will Prevail very closely echoes that on Lifesblood and Remission. But unlike Mastodon, TISD can't keep up a good thing, often having these riffs trail off into incongruous pieces of experimental/noise/sludge/whatever. Likewise, just when the band seems like they're developing some type of convincingly grim atmosphere during the Khanate/Burning Witch-esque portions that they'll sustain, they curtail that passage in favor of starting up more momentum-killing nonsense. This continues in a vicious cycle throughout both discs and is topped off by some of the most annoying vocals I've ever been subjected to. Two hours is simply FAR too long to be subjected to something as tedious as this... I mean, I'm all for getting more bang for the buck where music is concerned, but this is just overkill.

To add insult to injury, the packaging is an abomination. The 2CD case is one of those that opens from the right, rather than the left [I &^%#ing HATE that] and refuses to securely hold the discs in place; the insert contains no lyrics, liner notes that are very difficult to read and really poor quality individual shorts of the band members; and the tracklist on the back needs to be deciphered painstakingly to figure out which track is which and where one disc ends and the next begins. Relapse really dropped the ball on this one, unless it was intentional, in which case it's just in very poor taste. Thumbs down. "