Overkill - The Killing Kind (and kind of their career as a whole I suppose)

This rant's been a long time comin'

Hands up, whose favorite Overkill album falls between 1993 and 2007?  What's that?  Zero of you?  You mean to tell me that between Horrorscope in 1991 and Ironbound in 2010, Overkill released fuck all in terms of worthwhile releases? They're regarded as thrash legends and one of the only bands to fly the flag of thrash throughout the dark ages of the 90s and early 00s despite not actually releasing anything of quality for nearly two decades, none of which during that period even being a fully thrash release in the first place? Well how does that make sense?

I've alluded to this a few times and I've ranted about it outside of my reviews before, but despite considering myself an Overkill fan, placing Ironbound on my year end list in 2010, and claiming Feel the Fire to be the most perfect thrash album ever written and in my personal top five albums of all time, Overkill does not deserve the legacy they have.  At all.  Now I realize that Iron Maiden had a streak of albums most fans seem to dismiss (I personally believe they haven't made a full worthwhile album since Fear of the Dark, and even then that album half sucks) and Black Sabbath has a lot of forgotten albums and Running Wild tapered off tragically at the end of their career, but these bands all blazed paths and become gods of their respective genres through marvelous consistency and stellar songwriting.  They were originals that took their respective fields by storm.  Overkill on the other hand is a product of the times.  Overkill blazed about as many trails as Warhammer. 

But Bastard!  “Sonic Reducer” was in their setlist back in 1979!  That was on Feel the Fire, and you just called that the best thrash album ever!

Suck out farts, you idiot Borisite.  Claiming Overkill as the first thrash band because they were playing a punk cover of a punk song that they tacked on to the end of their first album six years later makes as much sense as claiming Judas Priest used to play doom metal because Sad Wings of Destiny isn’t as fast as Defenders of the Faith.  Overkill gets the same revisionist apologies that Exodus get, with fans claiming they would be as famous as the Big Four if their respective debut albums had shipped just a bit sooner.  Maybe they had these songs written earlier than 1985, sure, of course they did, but using that same logic, do you really think Metallica wrote “Metal Militia” or Slayer wrote “The Antichrist” the morning before they entered their studios in 1983?  I get it, Overkill was one of the first, and I’m not denying that, but I am denying that thrash was great because of Overkill.  Overkill was great because of thrash. 

But Bastard!  They released tons of great albums all throughout their career!  Look at The Years of Decay and even new stuff like The Electric Age!

Hey Forced Naysayer, we agree on something here.  Overkill has plenty of classics, any thrash fan who doesn’t love the first five albums should have their opinion immediately invalidated.  But think about it, all of their good albums were released during the period when the thrash scene was at its peak worldwide.  Thrash fell out of favor, Overkill start playing shitty groove metal.  Thrash gets cool again, Overkill shits out a legitimately great album in Ironbound.  Was that really an accident?  You expect me to believe that they played the kind of music that was the most popular all throughout the 90s and 00s while thrashing during the 80s and 10s because that’s just what they were naturally writing?  Having Randy Blythe guest on Immortalis shortly after Lamb of God released the very popular Sacrament had nothing to do with trying desperately to stay relevant despite running out of ideas over a decade ago?  I’m not buying it.  It was safe and financially intelligent to release thrash again, so they shifted their way of thinking and writing back to a thrashier mindset as opposed to the dumb stomping groovy crap they’d been doing.

Now, I clearly have a deep seeded frustration for Overkill being given a free pass on writing 9 lame albums in a row, but surely they’re not all that bad.  Every band has a stinker or two or at the very least a slight dip in quality over a long career, hell I mentioned earlier that Running Wild, my favorite band, really went out with a whimper, so why do I still consider them legends?  Here, and I hate to admit this, it has almost everything to do with the fans and the hype around the band.  Not one single Running Wild fan considers The Brotherhood or Rogues en Vogue to be proof of the band’s supremacy, whereas Overkill fans readily fly the flag of “THEY WERE ALWAYS AWESOME”. 

But Bastard!  You have to take those albums for what they are!  You can’t hold them against the classics because they’re a different entity!  Look at those albums in their own respective microcosms!

Can it, you butthole.

Actually, I think I’ll do that, it’ll probably help prove my point.  Hell, I’ll even pick my favorite of this era, just to show that even the best they had to offer during this streak wasn’t even really worth that much.  So ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve waded through the previous 900 words without wanting to stab me in the gullet, I present to you, the third (and best) album in the bum streak, 1996’s The Killing Kind.

I’ll give this album props for cleaning up that horrawfully terribad production from W.F.O., and it even starts off on a somewhat promising note, with “Battle” being a highlight for many fans of the album.  Me personally, I think the track is overrated and silly.  I mean, the dorky BUGGADUGGADUGGADUN *boondoon* YEEEEH is just goddamn irritating.  The song also suffers from a problem that many of these songs suffer from, and that’s that they just don’t really go anywhere, there’s no climax.  They mainly follow a fairly simple structure but they don’t feel like they lead to anything worthwhile.  By the time you realize the song is over, you’re already a minute or two into the next track.  The riffing is also focused more on hard chugging as opposed to nuts-first thrashing that the band was so good at doing in the 80s.  I realize I can’t expect the band to do the same thing throughout their entire career, but the fact remains that they just aren’t nearly as good at this groovy, Pantera-y style they go for during this era.  They keep it heavy, no doubt about it (tracks like “Let Me Shut That for You” and “God-Like” prove that in spades), but the style they go for is just damn boring.

I suppose I’ll deviate from my normal reviewing style and be amateurish for a second, and blatantly split up some time to point out the good and bad songs on the album.  As previously hinted, “Let Me Shut That for You” is a fun, high energy track with a catchy main riff and chorus, though there is a long noodly section in the middle that I’m none too fond of, it still stands as a clear highlight of the album, melding the newer groove material perfectly with their ever prevalent punk attitude.  “God-Like”, while not quite as memorable, is another rip roaring thrasher that keeps the pace up and tries adding a fresh, mid-nineties flavor to the sound they were championing on Horrorscope.  “Feeding Frenzy” is by far the best track here, starting with a bluesy, Sabbath style bass jam before transitioning into insanely fun, high-octane thrash metal.  This is what Overkill is good at and needs to focus on more.  This is also the only instrumental track on the album, which raises the question that maybe Blitz himself could be to blame.  Honestly, no, he isn’t the problem.  His snarl, while distinctive and charismatic, reminds me of Zetro in the sense that he’s actually quite annoying when you sit and think about.  On its own, his voice can be headache inducing, but in the context of the band, it fits perfectly and I could neither imagine another frontman in Overkill nor him fronting any other band.  He’s crazy and unrestrained, and I can only imagine blood squirting out of his eyes during any given song.  His over-the-top and completely balls out style is one of the defining characteristics of Overkill’s sound (next to D.D. Verni’s “look at me I’m loud and important!” bass).  And here, Blitz once again proves why he’s one of the biggest draws of the band.  “Certifiable”, despite being one of the lame songs on the album, has some truly raw vocals from him, with his classic crescendo in the bridge culminating with one of my most heartfelt “MOTHERFUCKER”s I’ve heard outside of Samuel L. Jackson or Joe Pesci. 

So with Blitz in top form as always and the production cleaned up considerably from the nearly unlistenable pangy bassy mess that was W.F.O., that leaves the instrumental performances and the songwriting, and oh lord are these ever the culprits with why this album and era in Overkill’s career so damn dull.  I’ve used the word “dorky” to describe the verse of “Battle”, and I think it fits well with the verses in “Bold Faced Pagan Stomp” as well.  Allow me to elaborate on that, because I realize it’s an odd choice of word.  It reminds me of the little ditties I used to write when I had been playing bass for nary a few months.  And let me tell ya, there is nothing dorkier than a twelve year old version of me.  It’s just amateurish and reeks of veterans not trying very hard.  The vocal patterns in the latter track are weepingly hilarious to me.  I hate to continually quote sections of lyrics in the reviews I’ve been doing lately, and I realize this is probably a few lines too many to make my point, but you just have to see this to understand:

Come a kick kick in the dick kick,
Gonna make ya sick kick, suffer you that!
Come the blood spills, get ya kick thrills,
On a will kill?
Suffer you pain.

In a pac wac, got a two on one track,
On a hit n' run smack, suffer you that!
Not tho be the romp or the kick kick whap stomp
Stomp stomp stomp
Suffer you that!

What in the living hell did I just witness?  I understand Overkill were never bursting at the seams with poetic genius but Christ on a cracker that’s on the Five Finger Death Punch sub-level of lyrical ineptitude.  Reading those lines don’t do them justice, you have to hear the bouncy stop-start pattern in which they’re delivered over the slow, churning groove riff to get the full effect of how nonsensically dumb the whole thing is.  If “Bold Faced Pagan Stomp” wasn’t bookended by two of the only three tracks I like, I’d skip it every time and claim it was never written.  And you know the worst part about all this?  “Bold Faced Pagan Stomp” is, along with “Battle”, probably the least terrible of all the bad songs on the album.

A few of the songs are bad in the sense that they just don’t do anything.  “Cold Hard Fact” and “Certifiable” (despite having that memorable moment in the bridge) just go by with little consequence.  Even worse yet is “The Cleansing”, which I will go on record as saying sounds like a precursor to Godsmack.  Listen to that slow, brooding riff that the entire song rides on, listen to that droning, lame chorus, listen to just how uninspired and lazy that song is.  That outro with the low “Jesus, cleanse me…” feels like it goes on for three solid minutes.  That right there is another problem that plagues this album, the songs, despite sometimes just blurring by, all seem longer than they really are, if you can believe it.  The worst offenders of this phenomenon are the aforementioned “The Cleansing” and “Bold Faced Pagan Stomp”, the latter of which I could swear is eight minutes long.  And rounding out the album are the two “doomy” tracks, “Burn You Down/To Ashes” and “The Mourning After/Private Bleeding”, which continue the trademark of being dull lowlights while also being grating on the nerves. Both of these tracks spend a majority of their running time focusing on gloomy and droning passages while suddenly picking up near the end before collapsing back in on themselves.  Why they chose to put two similarly structured yet out of the ordinary for the band tracks on the same album is beyond me.  Maybe it’s just me, but they have always bored the shit out of me when the band tries these slower songs because they’re an energetic band, these slow and gloomy numbers have always just been entirely too dry for any semblance of entertainment.  It’s always baffled me that some fans actually prefer this side of Overkill.  I dunno guys, the angrier and punkier the better, this slower style just doesn’t work for a band with the kind of attitude that Overkill exudes. 

And that is the one thing I’ll concede willingly about The Killing Kind, and that is that the attitude of the band is still here in spades.  That’s always been one of the main draws of the band in the first place and another one of those defining characteristics that make them stand out in the crowded thrash scene.  Their New Jersey origins really shine through in their “We don’t care what you say, FUCK YOU” attitude, and even on these dumb and lazy songs that populate the album, that swagger is still there, and it still helps the album stand up and identify itself as an Overkill album.  It’s the only constant throughout this entire tragic 9 album streak that keeps the albums from being 100% worthless.  While there is a split during this era, with the band focusing on primarily low and groovy stuff for the first five albums and then picking up the pace and getting slightly thrashier (while retaining the heavy groove element) for the next four albums, they keep that perfect marriage of punk and metal in spirit.  Most crossover bands wish they could have the attitude as nailed down and concise as Overkill have it, and it’s that attitude that helps keep The Killing Kind at least mildly entertaining throughout its duration.

But even with that swagger and amount of fucks not given, the album ends up dull on the whole, with only one standout “great” track and a couple other decent ones bogged down in this boring, slimy mire.  Overkill is best when they’re at their most pissed off and aggressive, and it shines through with fast, angry, aggressive metal with a punk edge.  This slow, Pantera style, does not wreck my neck in any way, and that’s what Overkill does best.


RATING - 34%


Also, for added hilarity/embarrassment (and to prove that I DO indeed love Overkill), here is one of my senior pictures proving it.

YUK IT UP, ASSHOLES.

Children of Bodom - Relentless Reckless Forever

 Ballistic Venereal Sofa

Bodom is one of those bands that really got me to where I am today.  Back in 2003 they were practically the first band to utilize some semblance of harsh vocals that I enjoyed, and as such opened the doors for essentially the entirety of extreme metal for both me and legions of like minded kids who have surely become valuable additions to the metal scene.  I realize how over the top silly they are and how utterly devoid of integrity they've become, but there will always be a warm spot in the cold, shriveled, black stalactite that once existed as my heart for this merry band of naked, drunken Finns.  Ever since Are You Dead Yet? the band pretty much seemed to lay down and accept their fate as the cool thing for the stereotypical Hot Topic malldwellers, churning out uninspired and stupid(er) music at a slower pace than before.  And this, 2011's Relentless Reckless Forever, stands as the band's seventh full length, and probably the one with the least hype surrounding it since their inception.

But why?  For their immense popularity, it seemed strange that nobody seemed to bat an eyelash at the prospect of a new album.  Was Blooddrunk really received so poorly that all the enthusiasm had been sapped out of fans?  Was their steady decline over the last few albums becoming apparent even to the new fans introduced to them in the second phase of their career?  For my money, I'd say it probably had something to do with the fact that their (unfortunately) trademarked silly cover song this time around was going to be Eddie Murphy's "Party All the Time" and that the short teaser promo for the album featured a dull chugging riff and people kickflipping flaming skateboards.  Children of Bodom has become so absurdly disconnected with their original fanbase that it's almost on par with the likes of Metallica or Genesis at this point.  Musically they really haven't changed significantly since the beginning, it's the same distinctive melodic death/power metal mixture they helped make popular along with Kalmah, Skyfire, Norther and the like.  However, this fact doesn't change that the  music just feels different somehow.

Perhaps it's the spirit of the music itself.  Dating waaaaay back to the Inearthed days almost twenty years ago, back when Alexi Laiho actually was a little girl instead of just a grown man who looks like one, the band was fueled on raw emotion.  The music was more restrained back then, but the band was serious about its craft.  Through the years, even after becoming one of the most insane and over-the-top bands to gain popularity until Dragonforce became a household name, they kept their quality of songwriting very high.  Melodic power metal with bombastic keys and cartoonishly overdone leadwork, layered over a harsh, high pitched rasp belting out the most juvenile and underdeveloped lyrics imaginable.  And despite the inanity of the lyric work and the complete and utter lack of restraint, the musicianship was so high, the songs so catchy, and the performance so entertaining that the flaws seemed practically nonexistent.  Since those happy, happy times, the band has since started to add more and more melodeath elements to the leads and riffs, tuning down further and focusing more on chugging sections, with the once prominent keys being relegated primarily to the background.  Maybe it's easier for Janne to drink while performing with these newer songs and that's why he keeps it up, despite his talent being so above and beyond the level he's been playing at lately.  Relentless Reckless Forever just continues the direction they've been going.

And after three long paragraphs I realize I'm only just now actually touching on the album at hand, and maybe it's because the history lesson is necessary because, to borrow a Walkyierian pun, history lessens.  On its own, this album isn't anything special, but it isn't anything offensive either.  It's just there, doing its own thing, not really bothering anybody, but when you remember where the album came from and the pedigree behind it, it's just intensely disappointing.  I ragesploded really hard on Blooddrunk four years ago, but really in hindsight the album isn't anything worth getting bent out of shape about.  I could blame myself for being 17 years old and stupid and overreacting to a predictably disappointing album, but in reality the album was a lame and inconsequential release from a band that used to put out some of my favorite music fairly consistently in their prime.  It's basically the '90s Mercyful Fate in that regard.  And that's the same problem with Relentless Reckless Forever here, there's just nothing here.  It's by far the least aggressive output from the band, with the only highlights in that department being "Shovel Knockout" and "Northpole Throwdown".

Good lord, I guess I should address something that anybody who read that last sentence is surely thinking about, I don't have the slightest fucking clue what kind of mushrooms these guys were on when they thought of the lyrics and song titles for this album.  Lyrics were always an afterthought with Children of Bodom, with Alexi making up a majority of them on the spot in the studio.  The lyrics and vocals were never the highlights nor the focus of their music, so it was one of those things I kind of let slide because the high energy melodeath/power metal was so much fun.  But now that the songwriting has taken such a hefty downturn over the past seven years, I can't help but hold them accountable now.  It's just... my god.  Five year olds have put in more effort than this.  It's just lazy and dumb.  "Pussyfoot Miss Suicide", what does that even mean?  "Roundtrip to Hell and Back", we knew it was a round trip by virtue of the fact that you came back.  "Was It Worth It?", I dunno Bodom, you tell me.  Are the new fans and the money really worth your old fans and credibility?  You know what?  That was a silly question, credibility doesn't buy you a nice house.

As I've said a few times throughout this stream of consciousness garbling, the music isn't necessarily bad here, it's just dull.  "Pussyfoot Miss Suicide" rides on a catchy melodeath riff that stands well enough on its own that I don't feel the need to lament about the lack of keys on the track, the title track possesses one of the few moments of old school Bodom in the solos, and "Northpole Throwdown" is a welcome hearkening back to the balls out theatrics of the first few albums that made me fall in love with the band in the first place.  But with that said, I can't tell you a damn thing about "Ugly" or "Not My Funeral".  The entire album is this dull, grey slab with a couple of standout moments here and there.  There are a few lowlights with the primarily low melodeath riff based songs like "Cry of the Nihilist" and "Was It Worth It?", but overall the entire album tends to run into itself.  The band was always at their peak when they essentially just played frantic power metal with insane leads, so when they slow it down or focus on the newer melodeath qualities like they've been so fond of doing on the last three albums, the whole thing just seems to fall apart.  It's a shame too because their talent is still there, they're just entirely out of ideas at this point.  Perhaps it's time to put the band on hold for a time and focus on side projects or maybe just take some time off.  Go ice fishing or... sauna shopping or whatever the hell you do in Finland.  Maybe they're just burnt out and they need some time to recharge, I'd certainly recommend they try.

Also the "Party All the Time" cover can fuck itself with dynamite.  "Funny" covers are useless and only serve to remind old fans how vapid you've become.  Knock that shit off already.


RATING 40%

For Today - Breaker

Holy water swirlies, ahoy!

In my latest review for everybody's favorite lost symphonic brocore goons, Winds of Plague, I mentioned that I'm a pretty decent sized fan of Sioux City, Iowa's For Today.  Now, for some, this probably came as somewhat of a shock considering I'm such a refined beacon of extreme metal supremacy, one wouldn't necessarily assume by my chiseled good looks and flowing, Ross Dolan-esque locks that I have a taste for Christian tardcore.  Yet here I stand behind a band of extended earlobes clutching tightly to their rosaries while scolding me for getting boners.

Before I get to Breaker, allow me to address that the band is flawed on a conceptual level.  What I mean is that they aren't a band for the right reasons.  I realize the notion of correctness is a subjective concept, but when a band just up and admits in interviews that "we don't do this because we love music, we do this because we love God and we want to bring Him to everybody, to let everybody become one with Him" or something to that effect, I get a bad taste in my mouth.  By basically admitting that their music is nothing but a vehicle for their religious propaganda, they've rightly earned a fair bit of criticism by actual music fans from all sects of belief, because who the fuck does that?  Mercyful Fate had a grand ol' time singing about Satan and had a huge interest in the theological beliefs of satanism, but at the end of the day they were still there to make some great, ass kicking heavy metal and holy shit did they ever deliver.  Where For Today fails is that their music takes a back seat to their message, which admittedly earns them guaranteed fans (Christian metalcore runs rampant with the same circle-jerk back-patting that NSBM does, giving unearned praise to mediocre bands purely for having the "right" message) but harms the music at its core.

With all that said, Breaker is the album where it is harmed the least.  This IS just a vehicle, don't get me wrong, and while it isn't the '67 Corvette Stingray of Mercyful Fate, it's still akin to an '81 Pontiac Grand Prix with a ceiling that's falling off, bald tires, and a bum carburetor that's prone to stalling at odd times.  Yeah it's not the greatest thing out there but it's personal, it has character.  For Today writes functional music for the style, and it generally works well (there are some things about Ekklesia and Immortal that fail too hard for me though), and the whole package comes together the strongest on their 2010 effort, Breaker.  It's produced in a very typical, dry, metalcore way, but there isn't anything particularly wrong with it.  And if you really pick apart the songs, there's nothing entirely special about the way they're written.  They follow tried and true formulas, busting out the clean vocals and the breakdowns exactly when you expect them to, but there's an undefinable quality about the album itself that makes the unadventurousness seem bearable, even enjoyable at several moments.

For example, the first proper track, "Devastator", is probably my favorite metalcore song written in the last several years.  The buildup works magnificently, with the vocalist's strong declaration to Hell and how many wedgies he's going to give it, really feeling like a man possessed, pounding toms and a dissonant buzz perfectly complementing his anger and conviction, letting you know that some serious shit is about to go down.  And when it finally releases, it lives up to its own hype and just rips the place apart.  The middle section with the gang shouts of "TEAR IT TO THE GROUND!", culminating in a crushing breakdown pretty much sums up the entire album in a nutshell.  What this album undeniably does not lack, in any measure, no matter how prejudiced you are against the style or the ideology, is aggression.  For Today is fucking pissed about how many people have turned their backs on God, and how strong of an influence the Devil has in today's world, and on this album they just fucking explode.  Despite my earlier claims of the band clinging too tightly to their faith in order to write anything particularly creative, their passion seeps through in more than abundant enough quantities.  I feel the anger and frustration of the band, I feel how much they care for the greater good in the clean vocal passages, I feel how furious they are with the current state of affairs in the fast and technical sections, I feel how badly they want to punish who they perceive as wrongdoers in their... well, punishing breakdowns.  Tracks like "Seraphim" and "White Flag"  pull all of the qualities together in a frankly masterful fashion that I wish other non-musically motivated bands would take note of.  The extramusical qualities of the songs shine in a fashion nearly as strong as Strapping Young Lad's City, and that is one hell of a bold claim to make.

I can't ramble on forever since this, while being exceptionally passionate, is still metalcore.  Musically it's something you've heard a million times before and probably hated a million times harder than that.  But out of all those millions of things, nobody has really actually managed to make me buy in to what they were selling with quite as much conviction as For Today has.  The impressively technical percussion, the occasional melodic overtones, the skull stomping breakdowns, the emotional purity of the vocals, just everything comes together in a very well done whole.  The album suffers a bit from the running theme of whoever The Breaker is, as his poems serve as decent interludes and help split up the album into distinguishable acts, but the pieces themselves are kind of lame and passive.  Plus the album kind of peters out at the end, with the last set of proper songs being pretty inconsequential.  With all that said, and my admittedly bipolar praise/criticism of the album aside, if you ever find yourself with an itch for big, stupid brocore on a moral high horse, look no further than Breaker.


RATING - 77%

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%

Dying Fetus - Reign Supreme

DYING FETUS

This will be yet another short one, but the reason behind that is just DYING FETUS.  My brain has pretty much been pummeled to a pulp here, Reign Supreme ranks as the band's best offering since Stop at Nothing nearly a decade ago.  DYING FETUS.  Just FUCKING.  DYING FETUS.

Years ago, my buddy went to a show Dying Fetus was playing, I don't even think they were the headliner, but when he came back, for about two weeks the only words out of his mouth were DYING FETUS.  He'd try to explain how crushing they were, but he'd get like three words into a sentence before just yelling FUCKING DYING FETUS.  He was a fan before, but after witnessing them live he just broke, and that's currently what's happening to me right here.  Just, everything is right with this album.  Despite having a few tracks being obviously stronger than others, ("From Womb to Waste", "Second Skin", "In the Trenches", and "Revisionist Past" are my favorites), there are no dull spots.  Old school fans of the band should love this, as the aggression has been kicked up to a notch not seen in nine years, and while they aren't as prominent as they used to be, there is no shortage of the signature chugging sections and hardcore influences.  There's more blasting and traditional death metal riffing this time around as opposed to just flip flopping between sweepydoodling and neanderthal stomps, though both of those traits are here in force.  Reign Supreme basically took me by complete surprise and grabbed me by the balls in a way I had not found sexual since... well since Cannibal Corpse released Torture a few months ago, but still.... FUCKING DYING FETUS.


RATING - 94%

Miasmal - Miasmal

THE BLAHGO

On one hand, I really shouldn't complain about a cool, by-the-numbers Swedeath worship band doing exactly what you expect them to do, but on the other hand there's just so little here to comment on that this will probably end up being one of my shorter reviews.  You can basically hear the album just by looking at it, cool OSDM worship band with a cool cover and on a reputable label for the niche, but really that speaks volumes for the creativity in play here.  That fabled Sunlight Studios buzzsaw tone and loads of d-beats plus loads of low growls, that's what you're getting, but you already knew that, so I suppose you're satisfied.

See, here's where I'm struggling.  It's incredibly difficult to write about a mediocre release, and that's why this is just a short blurb on LotB as opposed to a fuller, more fleshed out review that I'd also cross-post at MA.  If something is great, I can find tons of ways to express how hard I ejaculate rainbows when listening to it, and if it's really terrible I can pull endless silly analogies out of my ass comparing them to cuttlefish or something ridiculous.  Here it's just... blah.  It's typical and not very well executed or memorable.  It just... happens, I still can't name any standout parts and I've spun this several, several times.  The only thing that stands out at all are the leads and solos, which, to be fair, are all really, really goddamn good.  But that's the unfortunate part, that's really all there is to drool over.  The sound is good I guess, the riffs aren't really bad, nor are the rest of the musical aspects, but nothing sticks out as really good or bad.  And really and truly, that might actually be worst than sucking.


RATING - 44%

Splatter Control - Deleted

YOU ALL HAVE ZOIDBERG!

I will continue to ram my local scene down everybody's goddamn throats because I'm a prideful prick like that.  Today I present to you another product of Big Dick Records (the guys responsible for Smash Potater and Clocktower), Lombard, Illinois's death/grind outfit, Splatter Control.  As seems to be par for the course with the people around Big Dick, there's a lot of silly humor abound with this recording.  While I haven't really taken the time to sit down and decipher the low roars and figure out what the lyrics entail, I can tell by song titles like "Maxwell House of the Dead" and "Hardcore Dancing is Bad and You Should Feel Bad" coupled with samples from Billy Mays infomercials, Tommy Boy, and Futurama, that levity is probably the order of the day.  These guys write and perform music because it's fun, and unless you're composing symphonies that's something that I think everybody should keep in mind. 

But anyway, musically this is some great stuff.  There's nothing here you haven't heard before but it's played with such fervor that it doesn't matter at all.  Splatter Control is a trio made up of bassist Dan Ozcanli (who some may remember as the bassist of Clocktower), drummer Neil Schmidt, and guitarist/vocalist Brian Koz (who Facebook friends of mine will recognize as the PORQUEEEE guy from the Diamond Plate music video).  It's death/grind with a heavy lean on the death metal side.  The short songs and general intensity of grindcore is there, but the riffing, percussion, and vocals all tend to gravitate towards the death metal end of the spectrum.  As previously mentioned, the vocals are a low, hellish roar as opposed to a more guttural growl that one would expect from the style, but it adds a great boost to the low end and frankly meshes with the blasting intensity very well.  The tempo is always high, but never into the insane hyperblasting territory, and the riffing tends to wander around with chugging death metal and the occasional fast tremolo parts (like the title track, for instance).  I dunno, I'll just keep blabbering in kind of not-helpful terms if I keep going, so I'll cut myself off.

Definitely give this a listen if you can, and hey, that's super easy to do because you can get it for totally free at the band's Bandcamp profile here.  So yeah DO THAT.  I DON'T GIVE YOU SLOTHS FREE DOWNLOADS OFTEN SO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS TO SPREAD THE MUSIC.


RATING - 85%

The Black Dahlia Murder - Nocturnal

Butt Muncher's Singalong Songs

Now, I'm well aware that it seems to be the unspoken law when talking about The Black Dahlia Murder to use the word "metalcore" at some point.  Whether you're accusing them of scene kid faggotry (as it is so often referred to) or striking down the closed minded elitists (as the other side so often likes to retort), that dirty word always seems to bring itself up.  And ever since hearing the band, I thought the metalcore connection was a myth.  I used to refer to the band as such when I was a 15/16 year old Borisite thrash kid who was drawing conclusions based off the logo and artwork that adorned band shirts and the fact that I could feasibly have sex with most fans' earlobes.  Upon actually giving them a listen, I realized this is straight up melodic death metal, At the Gates worship.  I asserted for years afterwards that nobody actually called them metalcore or deathcore, because that's tantamount to calling Metallica a country group or Gargoyle a theatre company.  Yet in my research before writing this review, I found those dirty, dirty -core words being thrown around like confetti at a damn parade.  So let me shake off my utter confusion and just get it out of the way before carrying on with the review, ignoring it forever.  There is absolutely nothing resembling hardcore or metalcore or deathcore or lobstercore or whatever within the music of Nocturnal, nor any other Black Dahlia release.

There, now that I'm sure that opening paragraph scared away most casual readers, allow me to asses the merits of said album.  To date, this is the third full length release out of five, and the band has so far stuck to their pattern of "good album - meh album" flip flopping.  As such, Nocturnal being an odd numbered release, this is one of their good ones.  One thing I've noticed about this in relation to their other works is that this is by far the catchiest album they've done.  The choruses of "Everything Went Black", "What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse", and "Climactic Degradation" rank among some of the easiest to sing along with within the realm of modern melodeath.  The only problem with this, and the main flaw with the album, is that Trevor Strnad's vocals are goddamn terrible, so singing along can be grating.  His lows are good, they're fairly generic but they carry a beastly quality.  His highs on the other hand just sound like a cat.  It's a cliche way to describe poor high screeches, but fuck I seriously can't think of a better descriptor.  It's a nasty, grating, nasally rasp that sounds like a parody, and it's so far removed from his deep roars that it baffles me to think that one man not only does both of these, but consciously decided to make the terrible sounding style the predominant one.  I get that one vocalist doing two drastically different styles isn't anything new, Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth and Christian Alvestam (formerly) of Scar Symmetry are two well known examples, but the difference is that those two can do both styles well.  It's for this reason that "I Worship Only What You Bleed" and "Of Darkness Spawned" are two of the best songs, as he sticks with the lower register for most of those songs. 

Musically there is one aspect of this album that really stands out to me, and I'm still not sure if it's for a good reason, and that is the soloing and leadwork.  On one hand, well... it does stand out.  It's highly melodic, with every note carefully chosen and executed flawlessly, each a part of some complex scale mode nonsense that I know absolutely nothing about.  Kerry King had zero influence on the lead guitars, for sure.  On the other hand, it really only fits about half the time (the solo in "Climactic Degradation" sounds like it was copy and pasted in from a different song), and all I can think about is fucking Necrophagist and Arsis while the shredding is going on.  Maybe I'm a dunce, but this style of completely over the top and in your face neoclassical shredwankery over death metal was practically exclusive to Necrophagist up until about 2005, so hearing this in a Black Dahlia album is really goddamn distracting.  TBDM has always had very good leadwork, but this is just a bit much.  Soloing aside, the rest of the guitarwork is solid and varied melodeath riffing.  There are a few good tremolo picking sections in the title track and "Warborn" and such, and that very overused style that I suck at describing used during the verses of "I Worship Only What You Bleed".  The best way to describe it is "good but unoriginal".  There's nothing groundbreaking here, you've heard all of this before, but it just sounds damn awesome here within the context of everything you're given.

And that's really the best way to sum up the entire album, it's a bunch of stuff you've already heard several dozens of times throughout your metal listening career, but it's played well and with enough energy that it remains fun while it's on.  It helps that the album is relatively short, clocking in at under 35 minutes, and keeps a surprisingly healthy variety on hand.  There are straight rippers like "Climactic Degradation" and "I Worship Only What You Bleed", more melodic tracks like "Nocturnal" and "To a Breathless Oblivion", and of course the obligatory slower, more grandiose closing track in "Warborn".  This band has a habit of attracting a lot of vocal detractors, but really there's nothing here worth getting offended over barring maybe Strnad's offensively bad high screams.


RATING - 81%

Beneath the Massacre - Incongruous

Hey look, I'm being relevant!

While I normally seem to focus on newer music and probably 2/3 of my digital library is post 2000, I never really seem to be one of those first voices out.  When I tackle something newer, it's typically been out for a few months and people who are interested have probably heard it already.  That's why this is kind of new territory for me, as I'm not usually the "buyer's guide" type writer.  But regardless, here I sit with the new Brain Drill album, Incongruous, one of the more anticipated releases of early 2012 within mainstream extreme metal.

Wait, did I say Brain Drill back there?  Silly me, that's an understandable mistake to make, since I put this album and Quantum Catastrophe in a playlist and shuffled the songs and couldn't determine which album was playing without cheating.  Beneath the Massacre seems to have a bit of a history under their belts, but this is my first conscious taste of the band, and all I can fucking think about are other bands this sounds like.  I don't mean to say that these Quebecois tech noodlers are ripping anybody off, not at all.  I mean that Incogruous is a safe and predictable release in a dull niche genre.  Let's get something straight, I like overproduced, salad shooter tech death.  I've given positive reviews to Origin and Decrepit Birth, Neuraxis ranked on my year end "best of" list last year, I jerk off Fleshgod Apocalypse every chance I get, I like Anata and Psycroptic and Deeds of Flesh and Severed Savior and other bands of this ilk.  Where I draw the line and start to say the style itself is flawed is when bands like Brain Drill, Rings of Saturn, and Beneath the Massacre start shitting all over the concept of songwriting and just four finger tap sweep listeners into oblivion.  Some of the aforementioned bands base their songs on meaty hyperspeed riffs, others load all the melody they can imagine into their music, and then there are the bands like this, who just throw everything they can into the music and it just ends up dull across the board.  The only band that does this well enough to get away with is probably Origin.

So basically if you read my reviews for Brain Drill or Rings of Saturn, you know what my problems are with Incongruous here.  The notion of songwriting in the traditional sense has been thrown out the window from the highest suite of the Burj Khalifa, and replaced with hundreds of warm up exercises.  I get it, y'all can play your instruments as well as anybody else, but this shit is just lame.  Show a bit of creativity somewhere, por favor.  The songs all pretty much run together apart from a few exceptions.  One is "Hopes" because it's the first time a traditional deathcore style slamdown shows up (though it could possibly be in earlier tracks, but if it does I've never noticed despite listening to this several times), and the second to last track, "Damages", for actually basing itself on a real riff as opposed to relentless blasting and fretboard wizardry.  The aforementioned riff is actually extraordinarily good too and shows that the band is indeed capable of writing something memorable, but unfortunately the rest of the album is occupied by silly noodling that goes nowhere and doesn't stick with you at all.  The vocals aren't much to sneeze at either, but unlike the other bands I compare them to, the sit in the lower register and never wander outside of their comfort zone, which is certainly a plus.

I wish there was more praise I could give this, but I just can't in good conscience.  It's weak, it's overproduced, it isn't memorable, and it just blends in to the sea of faces.  I can't describe it any better than Animal from the Muppets behind the kit, a bland vocalist, and guitarists/bassists who have spiders for hands.  It's noodly and all over the place and doesn't have any lasting impact.  I'd certainly recommend the track "Damages" because it's a legitimately really awesome track hidden away at the end of this forgettable mush, but if you're like me and can't get behind the likes of Brain Drill and Rings of Saturn, you can safely skip this.  If you love that stuff, then by all means, this is for you.


RATING - 38%

The Lord Weird Slough Feg - Traveller

I get the feeling I'm about to get really pretentious...

About three years ago, back when I had first started doing this whole reviewing thing, I was a certified Lord Weird Slough Feg fanboy, to the point where I refused to refer to them by the shortened version of their name, despite going by simply "Slough Feg" for a few years at that point.  Throughout roughly winter of 2007 and the next several seasons, I listened to their six albums enough times to ingrain them all into my memory for the rest of eternity.  Because of that, I kind of burnt myself out on them.  Ape Uprising was met with lukewarm hype from me and Animal Spirits was released without me even noticing.  But with that said, I'd occasionally go back and listen to a few select tracks from each album, and this here, Traveller, was always my favorite to go back to, despite so many claims of Down Among the Deadmen being the best.

Those last few sentences probably seemed superfluous and unnecessary, but in reality it helps prove a certain point about this album, it is probably the most perfectly paced and well written concept album in all of heavy metal.  I always pick on Blind Guardian's perplexingly overwhelmingly adored effort, Nightfall in Middle-Earth, as the perfect way to NOT write a concept album.  NIME is horribly paced, with too much pointless filler trying to act as a vessel for the narrative, but instead breaks the flow of the music, which is what a metal album is all about, mind you.  There are a few nut shatteringly great classics there but for the most part it's overblown and horribly paced and a chore to sit through.  That is where Traveller gets it right, and what makes it such a fabulous album.  Yes, it is a concept album, but unlike so many other overblown stories and epic journeys you'll find in metal storytelling, listening to the duration of this record in one hit isn't necessary at all to get full enjoyment from it.  What I mean is, you can reach for a quickie and just blast "Asteroid Belts" or "Vargr Theme" or "Addendum Galactus" and have a grand old time without selling yourself short by not listening to the other nine songs on hand.  But with that in mind, it's still ideal to listen to the entirety of the album in one shot, as the emotion really seeps through and the story's impact hits that much harder when given context.  Everything meshes together for a great tale and still work as standalones.  That is how concept albums should work, they should be versatile, and that's what makes Traveller one of the best out there.

The album tells the story of Baltech, a space mercenary who gets caught up in a scheme to genetically alter the human race by splicing their genes with those of the Vargr, a dog-like race, in an attempt to create a perfect master race under the command of the mad Professor Rickets.  It's a pretty basic story, told in a pretty basic format, but what it lacks in creative structuring, it completely makes up for with how well written and engaging it manages to be.  This is where the pretension I mentioned earlier is really going to rear its head, because this is a story I can feel instead of just understanding.  I feel the helplessness during the final lines of "Baltech's Lament", I feel the conflicting forces of hatred and arrogance during the confrontation in "Vargr Theme/Confrontation", I feel the sense of accomplishment in "Addendum Galactus", I can feel every emotion that Mike Scalzi intended me to feel when penning this album, and that's what makes it such a smashing success.

I could prattle on forever about the superfluous merits of the record without even touching the actual meat, but I'll rein it in a bit here.  Musically, this is Slough Feg at arguably their heaviest.  There's a really poignant atmosphere throughout the album, suffocating us during the times when all hope seems lost and throwing us into a frenzy when the action ramps up.  The riffing at leadwork is probably some of the best Slough Feg have ever put to tape.  "Gene-ocide" contains some of the catchiest bits of metal recorded in the 21st century, the opening of "Addendum Galactus" also ranks up there.  It's kind of difficult for me to describe the influences at work here, as Slough Feg has always had a very unique sound, and here they managed to reinvent themselves for the fourth consecutive album.  The mindset behind this one is a bit more calculated and less organic than the previous three, while the Celtic tinge is entirely absent here, replaced with a spacey vibe to complement the story.  The sound is varied throughout the album, with high octane rockers like "High Passage/Low Passage" and "Asteroid Belts", slower, churning tracks like "Curse of Humaniti", and of course some of the signature Slough Feg bounciness and energy with "Professor's Theme" and "Gene-ocide".  There are even a few that blend two or more of the aforementioned styles to a masterful effect, like "Vargr Moon" and "Vargr Theme/Confrontation".   The use of repeating themes throughout the album really helps add to the cohesiveness and overall feel of the album as well.

If there is any negative thing I could say about Traveller, it's that the drums are produced weird so that each tom sounds like it's stuffed with dead squirrels and are indistinguishable from each other, and "Curse of Humaniti" is kind of a weak link when it comes to the staggeringly high quality of songwriting here, but those are really minor nitpicks in the grand scheme of things.  This is a journey that is completely worth embarking on, it's a fairly basic story that might be a little confusing without the booklet to explain some of the background, but the payoff is absurdly great.  I can't recommend this enough.  It's straight up heavy metal done in the way that only Slough Feg can.  It's almost impossible to describe, you have to hear it for yourself.  So quit reading my rambling bullshit and hop to it, kids.

RATING - 96%