Ball of Wax 63 Songs: Saint Nefarious – “All Promise Is Bust”

Our dear friend Lattney (see also Grumpy Bear, Holly and the Dead Saints)’s newest offering, “All Promise Is Bust” does not come from a happy place. You can hear the darkness creeping in with the first slow, heavy drum beats and sinister bass line. Your anxiety spikes as an Albini-esque guitar squall jabs across your brain pan. As this patiently bludgeoning dirge unfolds, Lattney intones a sad tale about a town where the children believe the lie of their own inherent exceptionality (a lie that is certainly one of White America’s greatest/most awful legacies), before ultimately finding themselves confronted with the truth of their own mediocrity.

Needless to say, I won’t be spinning this tune for my own five-year-old any time soon, but as a cynical old person and former jaded teenager of the ’90s, it hits a lot of my musical pleasure centers. Swirling, discordant guitars, angst-fueled dynamics, sung-spoken vocals that seem dispassionate and world-weary until it finally all becomes too much, and they become one with the sonic scream of guitar/bass/drum: “ALL PROMISE IS BUST!” Ironically, the brilliance of this song – and so much of Lattney’s prolific musical output over the past couple decades – would tend to disprove its own thesis. I never knew young Lattney B., and I’m sure the current version of him is not what he or his parents expected as a wee child of the American Southwest earning participation trophies and honorable mentions with the rest of us, but good lord, that boy was filled with promise, which has proven to be anything but bust.