RELITIGATING HIGH SCHOOL Vol VII: Job for a Cowboy - Doom

IT'S A FUCKIN' GOOD CHEESE
 

I knew which album I was going to end this series with way back when I got the idea to do it.  Job for a Cowboy isn't strictly metalcore, per se, but they provide a nice narrative conclusion to the whole thing in my eyes.  When nu metal died out, metalcore became the predominant heavy genre in the mainstream, and after few fruitful years at the top, it was eventually supplanted by deathcore.  I don't consider JFAC to have invented the style or anything, I'm sure there were plenty of lesser known bands to blend those heavy breakdowns with more traditional death metal and add pig squeals on top before them (I tend to think of them more as one prong in the trident along with Whitechapel and As Blood Runs Black when it comes to bringing the genre to the forefront, but even then I'm sure somebody can make a convincing argument otherwise), but this was the first I had heard.  It was the first that tons of people had heard, frankly.  JFAC is the first band I can remember that truly hit it big off the back of Myspace popularity, the first band to utterly blow the minds of kids who were into heavy music but weren't interested in old shit from the 90s, the first to speed past mere "aggression" and land headfirst into utter "brutality".  Us jaded internet folks understood that death metal had been a thing for like fifteen years at this point, but after spending the last few weeks completely immersed in early 2000s New England metalcore, I get it now.  Killswitch Engage and All That Remains sound like shuddering pissbabies in the shadow of "Entombment of a Machine".  If I hadn't had a cool mom and access to the internet and had instead followed the natural trajectory of Pantera > nu metal > metalcore, Doom would have wrecked my fucking brain too.

 

Looking back from the perspective of the wizened old know-it-all that I am today, I can pretty safely say that Doom is actually a fairly normal death metal EP for the most part.  Take away the bree bree vocals and the breakdowns and this is fairly standard technical death metal, with ripping tremolo riffs and punishing blastbeats aplenty.  It jumps around very often, never riding on a static section for more than a few seconds.  The drums are constantly spazzing out in a dozen different directions, the riffs twist and slither all over the place, quickly snapping into place on a dime and constantly throwing power punches at you with little regard for a logical flow.  It's chaotic and nasty, and the band's eventual progression into standard DM is much less surprising now that I'm revisiting this fifteen years later.

However, if this were regular death metal, it would have neither set the metalcore world on fire nor would it have drawn the ire of so many traditionalists.  No, it earned the reputation it has because of those different elements, and their inclusion did indeed meaningfully change it into something beyond simple death metal.  I'm not gonna pretend Autopsy didn't exist but let's be real, JFAC didn't include massive slamming breakdowns because of any traditional influence.  In essence, what made Doom what it was was that it was musicked in a way that bent much closer to hardcore/metalcore than death metal.  You don't listen to Cannibal Corpse the same way you listen to deathcore.  Instead of taking in entire songs as a whole, with different riffs and motifs working in tandem with one another, you listened to relatively disconnected blasts of intensity as the song built and built and built until it finally burst with a massive, devastating breakdown.  This is what Doom did spectacularly well, and if this had never gotten the grassroots success that it did then heavy music as a whole probably would've looked a hell of a lot different for a solid ten years.

Unfortunately, this is far from a perfect release.  Hell it'd be a stretch to even call it "great".  What Doom has going for it are two fantastic songs packaged along with three totally inconsequential snoozers.  "Entombment of a Machine" is the iconic deathcore song, and it's earned that reputation.  It's a four minute long cavalcade of chaotic blasting sprinkled in between gargantuan heaps of big stupid mosh riffs and big stupid breakdowns.  It's a big stupid song and it turns out that JFAC's strength at this point in their career is just being big and stupid.  This kind of knuckle dragging simplicity is beautiful in its primitiveness and the EP's greatest crime is that every song isn't like this.  "Knee Deep" stands out as the other great one, and frankly it could've logically been written by a different band considering how much more normal it is.  That one sports an opening riff that could've been written by fucking Deicide, and it absolutely rules.  Like I said before, if the vocals were different nobody would've bat an eye at this song, because that's really the only thing nontraditional about it.

The other three songs?  Eh, they're all fine but that's about it.  Opening with "Entombment of a Machine" was a brilliant choice because it instantly smacked you in the face with a sound that was genuinely new to most people and was the strongest song anyway, but it also carries the unfortunate burden of setting expectations way too high for the rest of the album.  "The Rising Tide" has like three separate moments where the band drops out and you know when they come back they're gonna fuckin' slam their hearts out but they just... don't.  They come crashing back in with more or less run-of-the-mill death metal with some heavier chugs interspersed in from time to time.  This happens time and time again, and it wouldn't really be a problem if these other tracks were as good as "Knee Deep" but they just aren't despite being fundamentally similar.  I remember their first full length, Genesis being a shock to me at the time because there was nothing deathcore about it and it was just straight ahead death metal with no twists, but going back to check out this debut EP 15 years later reveals that they had pretty much telegraphed that they'd be totally pedestrian without those breakdowns and pig squeals and that already took up the lion's share of what they were doing.  "Entombment" was so ubiquitous and so iconic that I think we all collectively tricked ourselves into thinking the entirety of Doom sounded like that, because it categorically does not.  And that's not to say that it's only good because of the deathcore cliches necessarily, because they'd go on to prove with Ruination that they fucking smoked when they shifted to a more tech death style, but it's probably not a coincidence that The Big Stupid is where all of the most memorable parts of this album can be found.  I bet you don't remember a single note of "Relinquished" but you all know that ridiculous screech in the intro to "Entombment" whether you want to or not.

Doom didn't kill the more melodic side of metalcore by any stretch, tons of iconic albums in that style came out after this (All That Remains had their biggest hit a full year after this came out and the hands down best As I Lay Dying album was released two years later), but I do see it as the signal flare.  It wasn't the nail in the coffin, but it was the writing on the wall, the changing of the tides, anybody paying attention to this scene knew that things were going to change for the heavier, and Doom is what opened their eyes to the possibilities.  Job themselves more or less stepped aside and let Suicide Silence or whoever lead the charge but I'd say it's pretty uncontroversial to say they got the ball rolling here.  At the time, I hated this for what it represented: a total bastardization of a style of music that I loved, taking my beloved death metal and ruining it with dumbass 60bpm breakdowns and bree bree vocals, but nowadays I appreciate it more for what it is than for what it isn't, and even then it's mostly pretty average on the whole.  And after listening to that New England style for a few weeks solid, I totally understand what made this such a smash hit at the time.  This must've been what it felt like to hear loads of late 80s Anthrax and Exodus for years before stumbling into Altars of Madness.  

RATING: 70%

Winds of Plague - Blood of My Enemy

GO AWAY

I've found myself oddly attracted to Adrienne Cowan lately.  No no, I don't mean like I'm stalking her or anything, just that I've found her presence on otherwise bland records to be really welcome.  Light & Shade is a fairly bland power/pop metal band but her wild shrieking that she punctuates nearly every song with quite liberally in stark contrast to her otherwise sweet voice helped give the album a bit of an identity.  Her main band, Seven Spires, is interesting but tends to whiff on execution, with their full length debut this year, Solveig, making the bizarre choice of rerecording the entire earlier EP and sticking it at the front of the album, creating a weird and disjointed experience that starts off underdeveloped and suddenly shifts into a decently okay Kamelot album at the halfway point when the new songs finally start.  The worthy thruline within that experience is once again Cowan, with her soft coos contrasting wonderfully with her insane Doroisms.  She has real personality in her voice, and it helps these otherwise middling albums become quite listenable.  She's looking in line to be the next Jorn Lande; a great vocalist who constantly finds himself in boring bands that he almost single handedly saves from being worthless with alarming regularity.  I feel like I'll be following her career at least mildly attentively in the near future.  I wonder if she's got anything else in the pipeline?

*checks her artist profile on MA*

OH GOD SHE'S IN WINDS OF PLAGUE NOW WHY GOD WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS??

*socks blow across the room*

So in all honesty, I thought Winds of Plague was dead at this point.  I was reviewing their discography as it was released a few years ago out of some sense of odd fascination/obligation, but by the time Resistance rolled around I just couldn't bring myself to give a shit.  That one was a lame hardcore album with synths popping in occasionally, if nothing else I give them credit for finally picking a style and sticking to it, it just wound up being the one they're the worst at.  After this the band went quiet and just disappeared from my radar completely.  So now four years have passed and the entire lineup has been replaced apart from the vocalist, and Blood of My Enemy has quietly dropped, and it's... kinda good?

This band pisses me off so much, they seemingly can't nail down their strengths for the life of them, but this is their second album now (the other being The Great Stone War) that actually manages to be fairly solid despite their ever present songwriting woes.  Instead of the endless idiotic genre hopping marred by some of the worst lyrics ever penned, this one focuses mostly on epic atmosphere with chugging melodeath riffs helping things along without being intrusively stupid.  The main strength of Blood of My Enemy is simply that it's not awful, which is admittedly a pretty terrible benchmark to work towards.  You can get the gist of the album after the first track, "Nameless Walker".  It starts of with some killer blast beats and punctuated keys, sounding exactly like the kind of band I always wished they'd become, but near the end it just devolves into slow non-riffs with sweeping keys over the top with gang shouts piercing through occasionally.  That's what most of the album is, slow non-riffs with needless keys.  They're back to trying to do everything at once, though not nearly as sloppily as they were on Decimate the Weak.  So you get a band trying to be epic through the lens of hardcore, which just a completely different approach to how metal does it, and it ends up being wonky and stupid most of the time.  The gang shouts and brochoirs are just out of place and weird every time they show up.  Even weirder is that, paradoxically, they sorta fit perfectly, because no other style of vocal would fit there.  It's just kind of a testament to how they're still peddling a style that just fundamentally doesn't work.

I lead into this talking about Cowan, but she really doesn't have any real effect on the band beyond a short vocal spot in the title track.  In fact, I don't know if any of them do, because it was almost entirely the same band that released The Great Stone War, the one oddly okay one, in between all the terrible albums.  Every last one of them has been replaced barring ol' Johnny, and yet here we are reverting back to the sound of an album that was already notably different.  This boils down to me assuming that, throughout everything, he must be The Guy behind the band, and whichever sound they decide to focus on depends entirely on what kind of mood he's in come writing time.  As a result, even though this focuses on atmosphere more than any others, there are still some straggling hardcore-isms.  The most notable offender is "5150", which is basically a random ass Slipknot song shoehorned into the album, and "Dark Waters" and "Snakeskin" do the same thing in spots, with the former finally giving way to the kind of massive dumbass breakdown the band is so fond of and did such a good job of holding back from throughout the album's runtime. 

Overall it's just... odd and disjointed, which has always been the band's problem, but it's a little bit more cohesive here.  It's best summed up as The Great Stone War with more chugs and less melodeath.  Which doesn't sound great, and in truth it's really not, it's just middling and forgettable.  For most bands this is almost worse than just being flat out bad, but with Winds of Plague it's actually commendable for how remarkably awful their worst albums are.  When it comes to this band, a weak and forgettable release is a huge step up from an actively annoying trainwreck.  So they've failceeded once again.  Congratulations?


RATING - 49%

Winds of Plague - Against the World

Goddammit WoP I will fucking stab you

I'm reviewing this one pretty much out of a sense of obligation at this point, since Decimate the Weak was an easy target that I reviewed mainly to make jokes and point out that the band really did have potential underneath the horrendous earlobecore elements.  Fate then conspired to bestow a physical copy of The Great Stone War upon me, which blew my mind by actually turning out to be a pretty decent album.  So a year or so later I hear they've released yet another album, this one with almost no hype behind it (there was a ton of hooplah behind DtW (which sucked) and almost none behind TGSW (which was okay)), so I figured maybe they had continued to improve upon their symphonic melodeath style they were playing around with on the previous album. 

You don't have to pick up your socks this time, this is just as atrocious as you thought it'd be.

I hate to harp on aesthetics, but one look at this album really should have given me a hint to drop my expectations back down to where they were after reviewing the first album.  The samurai that adorned the first two shitty albums (but not the good one) is back on the cover, front and center like he's always been.  The title alone could have told me that this was going to be an almost comical trainwreck.  Against the World.  Man if that doesn't sound like the creed of a wannabe hardcore kid who got yelled at for not taking out the trash, then I don't know what is.  The title, the blue tint, the actual artwork, just everything is a throwback to where they were before, and to the surprise of nobody except me apparently, that's exactly what happened.

I'll be the first to admit that I can get behind some retarded, chest beating brocore of the worst variety.  I love For Today, and they're a bunch of really pushy Christians who pretty much just break down and yell about how you're a shitty person for being human.  What Winds of Plague offers is a bunch of pushy douchebags who just break down and yell about how they DON'T RESPECT YOU 'CAUSE YOU GOT NO RESPECT AND WE DON'T RESPECT PEOPLE WHO DON'T RESPECT, RESPECT?!  People like to tear into Pantera for this goofy kind of primitive tree trunk pissing, but Pantera has got absolutely nothing on Winds of Plague.  The lyrical content of almost every song here consists of how awesome the vocalist and his crew are and how everybody else is a bunch of wannabe pussies who should stay out of their way.  I can handle stupid lyrics and attitudes I don't agree with, but my Christ WoP has got to be the worst at this.  Cook's yelling has actually gotten worse, shedding any tinge of metalness he may have previously carried, now being even more into the hardcore camp than he was before, yelling like Jasta and just as unintimidatingly.

Musically, basically all of the metal elements have been stripped away completely, and even the keys (their sole defining feature, mind you) take so much of a back seat that Rosa Parks would have to squint to see them.  There are a few strong metallic parts in a couple spots (most notably the first minute or so of "Strength to Dominate"), but otherwise this is brocore to the bone.  "One for the Buther", "Drop the Match", "Refined in the Fire", and most hilariously "California" showcase this expertly.  Gang shouts, rapping, one note slamdowns, it's all here in abundance, almost entirely devoid of the occasional blast beat or light key section the band used to chuck at the listener occasionally.  They've basically stopped playing the flip flop game and finally settled on one style to focus on.  Before, the songs would be irritating due to the nonsensical hopping between hardcore, melodeath, symphonic metal, and deathcore, but now they've decided to eliminate that problem by focusing solely on hardcore, which is a shame because they really suck at hardcore.  I mean really, one listen to "Drop the Match" or "California" should give so many kids flashbacks to their nu metal days, and this is supposed to be their tough, kick ass statement to the world. 

What makes this album extra irritating in comparison to it's predecessors is that their trademark "boring middle of the album" is even more boring and nondescript than previous albums.  I can basically tell you nothing about any songs between "Refined in the Fire" and "California".  They all just kinda happen, there's almost no creativity or standout songwriting (good or bad) on any of the five or so tracks in the middle.  The only reason the album picks up at all near the end is because "California" is such a hilariously poor attempt at a tough brocore anthem.  Seriously, I hate to quote a section of lyrics again, but:

Put yo' haaaands up!
Reach fo' the sky!
Do what I say or let the bullets fly!

That's just... so fucking stupid.  I can barely wrap my brain around that, it's just so unabashedly dumb.  I don't even want to comment on it further.  Just... LOOK AT IT.  Look at that lunacy, that dipshittery, that fudscullery.  I have to make up words to describe how stupid that is.  That stanza needs a helmet, seriously.

Now, despite being uninspired and stupid tardcore that I've spent the last several paragraphs raging against, observant readers and adoring fans of mine have probably realized by now that I actually awarded Against the World a higher score than Decimate the Weak, which I've implied isn't as terrible.  The thing is that while the quality here is consistently low, it's actually a better effort in my eyes because Winds of Plague actually know what they want to do this time.  Flopping around like a fish out of water between three or four styles that just do not mesh makes for a very irritating listen.  This, on the other hand, is consistently bad nu metal/hardcore crap but at least it doesn't keep changing it's mind every three seconds like a fussy child.  Winds of Plague are a bunch of dickbag fucknards for getting my hopes up with a decent album facing the right direction before unleasing this tattooed bumcore monstrosity upon my naive, sensitive, and non-stretched earlobes.  Stop toying with me you monsters.


RATING - 22%

Shadow of the Colossus - Shadow of the Colossus

HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THROUGH DORMIN'S PLOY YOU FUCKTARD?

Not sure why, but I feel like I always have to defend myself when expressing the fact that I enjoy this album.  This strange xenophobia in metal fandom has been perplexing me for a while now.  I rode the deathcore bashing train at first but not just because everybody was doing it, but more because by dumb luck I'd only heard bad deathcore bands first.  It was kind of equatable to somebody listening to several bedroom bm artists and coming to the conclusion that black metal must suck.  Yeah, Emmure and Suffokate and Suicide Silence and whatnot are garbage but Burning the Masses and The Browning exist and they rock just fine.  Still, the fact that these Californian dudes in Shadow of the Colossus carry that patented overdone production job and sport a few breakdowns here and there means that they get lumped in as an abomination upon metal along with other bands who don't deserve the dubious honor amongst the equal amount who actually are.

So yes, the deathcore cliches are here, but they aren't as overdone or grating as the genre's worst.  For example, there's that production job I mentioned.  It seems like every deathcore band gets the same fucking producer because despite peeling away enough layers of the genre to find the true gems and beacons of creativity within it, I'm still hard pressed to find too many albums that don't carry the same general sound and tone.  It's a bit hard for me to describe, but the drums are pushed way up to the front and are prone to the cymbals clipping, the guitars have a beastly bottom end and an overwhelming amount of crunch, and the vocals are heavily prominent at the same time.  Basically, dynamics go out the window and every member fights for the spotlight.  It can get to be a bit much during the blasting sections at times but I feel it really helps add to the frantic pace at the same time.  The vocalist is pretty standard, switching between high growls and low roars, double layering the two styles a good amount of the time.

One of the reasons Shadow of the Colossus stands out (apart from being named after one of the best video games ever made (seriously, put down Call of Duty and go pick it up, like right the fuck now)) is because of how varied it is.  I'm a huge proponent of "find something you're good at and don't fuck around with it", but if you're good at quite a few different ideas, then by all means mix it up.  Shadow of the Colossus is good at a few different things, and each track really hammers that home.  There are blasty speedfest numbers in "Constructing Ultimate Destruction" and "Serve the Death Sentence", slower, grinding, breakdown heavy tracks like "Labor, the Enslaver" and "The Grove", and an overt and powerful melody that permeates through "Instrumental" and "Losing Sensation of Dimensions".  That melody is actually fairly prominent throughout most of the album, emulating a less technically proficient Decrepit Birth in lead style.  Unfortunately, no tracks really stand out as the best but the album doesn't really feel like one greater piece of work as a whole either.  The songwriting is certainly good, but I feel like they haven't truly broken out into their own style yet, and as such are stuck with the title of "Best Generic Band".  The talent is there, the ear for melody is there, but it's still missing something.

Despite my generally lukewarm sentiments, I do really like Shadow of the Colossus and would recommend them to both fans of deathcore and people like me who are just trying to explore this supposed bastard genre.  Everything is solid enough to be enjoyable but just a little bit under the threshold of being totally awesome.  I dunno, if you read this, try it out, and don't like it, at least play the game the band is named after.  My email is in my profile, I'm sure you'll want to thank me.

RATING - 78%

Winds of Plague - The Great Stone War

MOO! MOO! MOO! MOO! COW! COW! COW! COW!

No way around it, Decimate the Weak was shit. I maintain my stance that Winds of Plague had potential underneath the laughable posturing and trendhorning, but they needed to focus on melodic death metal with a strong symphonic presence and drop the hardcore pretenses. I understand that the vocalist is basically a pure hardcore guy judging by his vocal stylings, but the rest of the band was always hopping between hardcore, melodeath, symphonic metal, and deathcore. There was no cohesion between the style mixing, creating more of a dry salad bowl effect instead of a much tastier melting pot. Therefore, I had initially completely passed on this album because of my bitter cynicism and past experience (most bands don't make the changes that I feel will make them improve (see: All That Remains, Meshuggah, et cetera)). Eventually, like it always does, curiosity got the better of me. To my bewilderment, they actually kind of did it right this time.

Once again, go pick up your socks.

The album opens with a purely symphonic intro, entirely devoid of the insipid breakdown underneath like what was featured in Decimate the Weak's opening track. No, this time the goons restrain themselves and actually let the keys alone create a grandiose atmosphere as a backdrop for a spoken word intro. Right around here, two things came to my mind. 1) These guys are really channeling their inner Rhapsody, which could totally be a good thing. 2) This is going to be a concept album. The latter realization scared the hell out of me. I'd spun the previous album several times in a futile attempt to wrap my head around the disjointed mess, so I was no stranger to John Cooke's absurdly awful lyrics. For a concept album to be properly done, you can't just shit one out. It requires forethought, storytelling skill, and lyrical prowess, none of which this man possesses. Not to mention his hardcore/deathcore vocals wouldn't do well to carry a story anyway, and were poor by the genre's standards in the first place. Well spoiler alert, that much hasn't changed since the last outing (the title of this review is actually featured at the one minute mark of "Soldiers of Doomsday"). A couple guest vocalists show up to presumably break the monotony, but since they're the guys from Terror, Hatebreed, and Suicide Silence, they don't add much of a new flavor. Martin Stewart appears on the first proper song, "Forged in Fire", and he's the only one I can actually pick out during the album; Jasta and Lucker just pass through without much presence.

And this brings me to my next point, and by far the most important and most improved, the actual music. The disjointed cut-and-paste style of songwriting that was so prevalent and so nut twiddingly irritating on Decimate the Weak actually only manages to rear it's malformed head a few times. The aggressive melodeath riffing actually takes front and center for a majority of the record, relying on the backing keys to provide the necessary atmosphere and melody. Whichever pretty face they're using to manipulate these keyboards now has a more important role this time 'round as well. She doesn't get any solos or anything, but it's actually really noticeable when she's silent. Her main job seems to be mimicking the melodies the guitars utilize and to play simple backing chords, (apart from the occasional quiet piano passage) but it's just... better on this album. The guitar work is actually the biggest improvement to be found. The riffs aren't anything to drool over and most won't stick in your head, but they aren't purely shit like they used to be. There are a few memorable moments like the slowed-down-Bodom moment near the end of "Approach the Podium" or the simplistic yet not downright retarded guitar solos in "Battle Scars" and "Our Requiem".

I must warn the potential listener that the ever dreaded breakdown is still around, as Winds of Plague is still deathcore and therefore will not part with it unless it is pried from under their cold, dead extended earlobes. Thankfully, most of them are short lived and not too horribly flow breaking. But unfortunately, the few insipid, blatant slamdowns that occur do indeed throw a large, tattooed monkey wrench into the gears of the metal machine. A breakdown by nature is supposed to be hard hitting and brutal, it's entire purpose is to switch up a song or throw the listener off balance or just plain smash them over the head with a brick. Bricks don't flow, you've never heard of the Brick River Rapids because it doesn't fucking exist. You know what demands flow? Epic, soaring symphonics telling a tale regarding an apocalyptic conflict between good and evil. The two main forces at work here are diametrically opposed to one another, and it's really distracting. I'll concede that most of the breakdowns on display are actually somewhat subtle and manage to continue the previously set pace of the songs, but there are a few of the dreaded breed regardless. Let's loop back once again to the first proper song, "Forged in Fire". The entire song rides on a few heartfelt, if somewhat unimaginative, melodic death metal riffs. It's high speed, it's pure aggression, it's a well oiled machine running on all cylinders. Three minutes into the track, near the end, we finally get hit with a breakdown. It's at the same tempo, it flowed into itself nicely, it's just basically a fast chuggada chugging section, nothing to be too awfully upset about. Fifteen seconds later, the entire band drops and we're left with Cooke's stupid yelling. You know exactly what's coming. Yup, it's the asinine, significantly slower, one note bonehead slamdown. It's big and stupid, and that can have it's appeal if the entire idea of the music is based on it, but it isn't on The Great Stone War. The album isn't built on breakdowns, it's built on high tempo melodeath and sweeping keys. An impromptu ninja fight has no place in this experience. They never add anything to this album and serve no purpose other than to aggravate the listener. This really stupid kind isn't featured on every track like the previous album, but when they show up they're definitely distracting.

So what we're left with is yet another flawed effort, but a massively improved one. The problems that punctuated Decimate the Weak are still here, but they've been scaled back significantly. Yeah, some tracks just go by with no consequence ("Creed of Tyrants", "Classic Struggle") and some are peppered with poor decisions ("Chest and Horns", "The Great Stone War", "Forged in Fire"), but overall the few good aspects actually manage to at least match up in weight against the bad ones this time. I actually feel it manages to outweigh the bad slightly. I'll give the band credit this time, it's clear they're trying their asses off, but I just wish they'd drop the stupid core pretense and work towards a totally symphonic melodeath release. That Twizzler chain from the previous album has been replaced with a plastic chain. It still isn't entirely strong, but it can hold some weight now and is definitely sturdier than licorice.

RATING - 60%

Winds of Plague - Decimate the Weak

Well, they ALMOST managed to not suck...

Let's get something out of the way really quickly. Yes, Winds of Plague's image is incredibly stupid. While I'm sure they weren't aiming for it, their metal aesthetic is so far off the mark that one really can't be blamed for being put off this band before even hearing a single note. Their hilariously bad music video for "The Impaler" sure as hell didn't help matters either. They look like (and probably are) a bunch of kids who were into hardcore that fell in love with Job For A Cowboy's infamous EP, Doom. They needed something to help them stand out in the flooding deathcore scene, so they chose to incorporate keyboards. To be completely honest with you, it worked very well, because I would have never been interested in hearing the band if it weren't for the symphonic prefix. But the bottom line is that merely doing something different isn't enough to legitimately garner genuine praise. It's been said several times before, but just because you're the first guy to train an elephant to piss in its own mouth, doesn't mean it's great purely because it's new. But here's the strange thing about Winds of Plague, they aren't really all that awful down at their core.

I'll give you a second to collect your socks that inevitably just flew off.

What I mean is that when they stick to trying melodic death metal, they're passable. Not great, but passable. Nobody in the band is a particularly strong songwriter, but the keyboard melodies actually seem to work over the generic chug riffing most of the time. While there aren't too many bands doing what they are doing here, it's still not very adventurous. There aren't too many strange riffs or exploratory melodies, but they do the job well enough to obscure the biggest problems with the album when they are in top form. For example, "Angels of Debauchery" has a churning middle section that focuses more on the atmosphere created by the keys, and they manage to give a somewhat soaring quality above the bland heaviness underneath. It manages to slow the song down despite frequent blast beating, giving it a somewhat mystical quality that the rest of the album sorely lacks.

Sadly, that's where the praise ends. The rest of Decimate the Weak is every bit as bad as the general opinion seems to reflect. I mentioned that nobody here is a very good songwriter, but the disjointed cut/paste style that most tracks feature is extremely irritating. It seems like these fellas enjoy deathcore, hardcore, melodeath, and symphonic metal, but they haven't the slightest clue how to actually blend them into a cohesive beast. Several songs will awkwardly jump from a generic melodeath riff into a cliche deathcore breakdown with absolutely no warning. The opening track, "Anthems of Apocalypse" is a perfect example. The song begins immediately after the pointless symphonic intro track with a typical metalcore/melodeath riff and a simple chord progression on the backing keys. The song follows that general template until suddenly stopping and turning into a hilariously brutal breakdown. I swear, you can hear the hardcore dancers in the back of your head start masturbating once it starts. The vocalist spurts a few ultra low, sounding like a deathcore parody, syncopated vocal lines before the song randomly switches back to where it was when it started. I sat stunned at the completely out of place breakdown upon first listen. "Maybe I just don't understand it" I thought to myself, as I was still early in my deathcore quest at the time and still didn't understand the thought process behind most of the decisions that seemed questionable to me. But before my thought was even finished, another asinine breakdown crashes through and stinks up the place. The hardcore "YOU WANNA SEE US FAIL?! NOT TODAY MOTHERFUCKERS!" yelling over the top was the icing on the cake. There was absolutely no way the band could redeem themselves after that insipid move. Yet, when the breakdown ended (as abruptly as it started, I should add), it was replaced by an adequate blasting section accompanied by the first riff I wouldn't describe as retarded. That's just the first song folks, and it never improves. Sometimes there's an unnecessary key only section and sometimes there's a big, dumb slamdown, but it never follows a logical flow. Winds of Plague is trying so hard to be against the grain and in support of throwing away conventions that they forgot to actually write a coherent song. I don't allow Opeth to do this shit so there's no way in hell that these tools get a free ride either.

Which leads me to my next point, this vocalist is fucking terrible. He has the common decency to not distort the shit out of his vocals like Suicide Silence, but there's no power behind any of his styles. He sounds like he just recently got into the music and just listened to a few similar bands in order to get the general idea down, as opposed to actually training his voice to growl with ferocity. Merely changing the way your voice sounds does not count as death metal vocals. He seems more rooted in hardcore and therefore has a voice that's incompatible with the melodic death metal that takes up a majority of the record. He only truly sounds like he belongs on a few choice spots, like near the end of the title track. Apart from being crappy and incompatible, he also spews some of the most retarded lyrics I've heard since Five Finger Death Punch. I'll concede that I don't know who the primary lyricist is, but nothing changes the fact that Jon Cook is the one whose mouth they are regurgitating from. I mean, for god sake, look at this choice excerpt from "Reloaded"

We've got the world in the palm of our hands.
Bustas fall down when we're barking commands.
Atlas ain't got shit on our steez.
Kick out the chair and get on your knees.

I really, really wish I was making that up. That reads like a mallcore parody, and yet here is this grown man making a complete fool of himself by yelling this drivel with honest conviction. Angsty teenagers write better than that, which is an absolutely pathetic line to be under. Sorry guys, but either ditch this fool or just give up, because despite the fact that he is so forgettable and easily blocked out when listening, he is the weakest link in a chain already made out of Twizzlers.

Decimate the Weak is bad, no two ways around it. I feel like they actually have some potential beneath the bad songwriting, lame image, and gimmick (ooh look, we have a chick in our band, here's a picture of her boobies, buy our albums please). If you've got tattoos covering both arms and use the word "fuck" like it's a punctuation mark, you are most likely the target demographic, but I can't even guarantee you'll like it considering some of my deathcore friends have complained about the sub par quality of the record. I guess if you enjoy the genre and don't mind a bit of experimentation, it's at least worth a listen. It's different, but far from being good. If they gave up on the breakdowns, hired a vocalist who actually carries a powerful set of lungs, and focused more on the light keys over fast heavy riffing, they could be okay. They flirt with that idea a few times here, but mostly tend to play simple melodies over simple chugging patterns, which frankly, takes about as much skill as being able to pick your nose without drawing blood.

RATING - 19%

Cryptopsy - The Unspoken King

Like a cattle prod sodomy...

I now distinguish between Cryptopsy and Craptopsy, with the latter beginning their career with this album, and I propose that the head honchos of the Archives add Craptopsy as an alternate name, so it'll show up upon searching. There are reasons I listen to Cryptopsy, and then there are reasons I don't listen to deathcore. I listen to Cryptopsy (albeit not as often as most fans seems to) for the hyperblasting intensity, vile yet indecipherable lyrics, Lord Worm's frenzied and frankly terrifying growls and shrieks, the unnecessary and foolish yet bizarrely entertaining bass breaks, and Flo's absolute kit mastery. I don't listen to deathcore for the unimaginative riffing, groove gone wrong, god awful vocals, copious useless breakdowns, and pretty much every element that is a staple to the genre. I've tried to appreciate these bands for what they are, but I just can't. Craptopsy has managed to take the worst of both deathcore AND fucking mallcore, throw out all of their previously established traits, and market it to the lowest common denominator of music fans.

I sit here in my basement, on an old Dell computer, drinking a generic brand of Dr. Pepper, eating a cheap Frito's knockoff, and I'm listening to this album, and I cannot convince myself that I'm surrounded by mediocrity. The computer works, the pop and chips are decent, but the music is absolute unmitigated shit. I'm listening to a mallcore abortion with traces of deathcore thrown in just to piss off the old fans. There are breakdowns galore, it's like Killswitch Engage's wet dream. There is nothing wrong with breakdowns when used tastefully (listen to Raining Blood for a prime example), but so many shitty bands nowadays have decided that a breakdown is just a perpetually unchanging open chord in an atypical rhythm. It can work, but not here. Craptopsy has essentially created the perfect failure in the sense of the breakdowns.

But lets not get hung up on something silly like breakdowns, because that is but a small part of the music as a whole. Well, I'll tell you that the songwriting is equally atrocious. Maybe not in terms of structure, as that's a stupid thing to bitch about, let alone take time to make an analytical evaluation of such a thing, but in terms of what is in the songs. New vocalist Matt McGachy is decent by deathcore standards, so I guess he fits... But then again, I'm not going to compliment a complete dickhead for being really good at kicking me in the balls. Every once in a while, he attempts this punch worthy clean mallcore whining. As soon as ANY trace of mallcore appears in your music, you might as well tuck your nuts inwards, return your metalhead license, and leave the fucking hall. The new keyboardist, Maggie Durand, serves zero purpose and is only audible four or five times. It's like a saxophonist joining Motorhead! What's the fucking point?! If they could've utilized her properly *cue jokes*, she could've been an interesting addition that may have been the breath of fresh air that Cryptopsy needed. Instead, she does piss all and has her name on the first Craptopsy record. Nice way to sully your careers morons!

Even the established members are underwhelming. Flo only shows what he's made of a few times while the rest of this atrocity is just really uncreative beats with none of the charm or intensity that the previous records contained. The bass sounds mallcorish, and there are nearly zero solos on the record. Solos aren't a necessity, but when the music is this boring and/or bad, a little break like that is appreciated. But, as has been said, and as all Cryptopsy fans have feared, with both Jon and Worm gone, The Unspoken King lacks everything that made Cryptopsy what it was back in the 90s. And as if the performances weren't dull and crappy enough, almost every song is over four minutes, which is way too long for this bullshit music.

This is one of the few bands that deserves to lose points purely for the past. Honestly, on a purely musical level, this might score something in the teens. I know I'll be bitched at for that comment, but I feel it holds merit here. If Helloween would've released Obscura, would it still have such a ridiculously high score? No, that is a case (albeit an extreme one) where the name actually becomes a hindrance. The worst of the worst on here are most likely Bemoan the Martyr, Anoint the Dead, The Plagued, and Contemplate Regicide, but trust me when I say nothing is remotely good. The Headsmen actually has a few enjoyable parts, but it's one of the VERY rare occasions.

Congratulations Craptopsy, are you proud of all the new fans you've garnered? I've yet to meet a Cryptopsy fan yet that has liked The Unspoken King. In all, there are nearly no redeeming qualities at all, and deserves every chunk of shit thrown at it. Grating, unimaginative, objectively shitty, some of the worst wannabe Job for a Cowboy vocals I've ever heard (why anybody would ever look to that band for inspiration is beyond me), unimpressive, and repulsive in every sense of the word. Please, do yourselves a favor and don't follow in my footsteps. Do not listen to The Unspoken King. Go drink a triple thick diarrhea milkshake straight from your mother's ass, it'll probably be more enjoyable than this god awful abomination of an album.

RATING - 5%