*Eyes Turkey* I don't really know what to make of this album, and it's not because it's so weird and/or varied that it discombobulates me. The problem is that I just think it's really hard to have an opinion on something that more or less doesn't really exist.
Genocide Pact isn't necessarily a bad band, they're just an extraordinarily bland one. Order of Torment is pretty much just mid paced death metal with not much else going on inside itself. The songs all groove along at a head-nodding pace with a few breaks of speed and one or two parts that I think are supposed to be doomy but in reality are just slow, but that's pretty much the long and short of the entire ordeal. The peripheral aspects of the band are all just fine. The guitar tone is suitably beefy and the drums hit like a truck, but the songs they actually create with this sound are totally static. This is probably a weird thing to notice, but despite the occasional tempo changes, the songs all tend to sound the same because there is one type of riff they abuse into fucking oblivion. Strum a quarter or half note, and then follow the next measure and a half with eighth or sixteenth note palm mutes over a grooving double bass. I realize this is probably a dumb thing to criticize because it's not even really a technique, but pay attention. It's constant. Every single track seems to be based around this ultra basic riff. The tempos change sometimes, the drum fills vary, and the fast portion of the riff is sometimes a bit more technical but it's all the same thing.
This stye of death metal (specifically mid/low pace chugs and grooving double bass) can work just fine. There are plenty of classic bands who don't blast along at top speed the whole time. Look at Bolt Thrower, Jungle Rot, Asphyx, and especially Autopsy. It's not necessarily uncommon, but I think it's fairly difficult to make it engaging throughout an entire 40 minute album. What those bands all have in spades that Order of Torment very glaringly lacks are twofold: engaging hooks and a sense of savagery. There's a sort of danger and outright meanness attached to the classic mid paced death metal bands, and all of them are unabashedly unafraid to throw memorable hooks at you and make something catchy in addition to brutal. Instead what Genocide Pact reminds me most of are post-World Demise Obituary, where the band just writes gluttonous mid-paced drudgery with no urgency or vigor. It's a bunch of sound that just sorta happens and that's it. But even then Obituary at least has the X-factor of John Tardy, who is an insanely iconic vocalist who helps even their shitty songs sound absolutely fucking killer in a live setting. Genocide Pact doesn't even have that, as Tim's vocals are just a nondescript low growl that complements precisely nothing.
There are things to like here, but admittedly not many. "Pain Reprisal" has the standout section of the album with the homage to "Hammer Smashed Face" near the halfway point, but it's pretty telling that the best thing about the album is the thing that reminds me of Cannibal Corpse, a better band in every conceivable way. "Structural Dissolution" is also notable because it has the most extreme variance between tempos, and in a way it sort of accidentally highlights the band's greatest weakness, which is the static nature of the songs. When they build on a slow section and then cut loose and lose their fucking minds in a blasting segment, it really gets the blood pumping. It builds and releases and that's exactly what exciting death metal bands can do. If they did this sort of thing more often they'd likely be a thousand times more entertaining. But as it stands, it's a woeful few times throughout the album that they actually break their chains and turn in something with some actual fucking adrenaline behind it. This is an opening band, not a headliner. Genocide Pact is the group that goes on when people are still shuffling through the doors and getting beers, because no matter how heavy these songs are, they don't contain much of anything worth pricking up your ears and paying more attention to.
RATING: 40%
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