Style: death metal, black metal
Label: 20 Buck Spin
Year: 2013
Home: Olympia, Washington
Members: n/a
For me bands like this always sound better in concert where someone on stage yelling or growling incoherently doesn't seem unusual with the bad sound systems some clubs have, or where all you hear is a distorted rhythmic jumble so why even try for anything melodic, where solos are less about playing something interesting with direction & more about headbanging while just clearing the air with a bunch of notes in a row. This is wild mosh pit music for a drunken revelry, but I just can't imagine myself listening to this music outside of seeing it live. It's obnoxious live, while the good studio production values make me realize how uninteresting & noisy the solos really are, how simple the riffs are if they have their distortion turned down, how the growling lyrics are completely indecipherable so why even bother writing words at all & ... well, I do hear the bass a few times which I don't in the club. But, the studio version of this drunken metal attack only makes me realize how bad it really is. Death metal that is as brutal & messy as it gets, creative not really, coherent not even & crushing I've heard done better by Pantera as they turn the distortion up just enough to not fry but still let the riff shine through. I don't have a problem with death metal, those who have read this blog may know I have many favorite death metal bands. What I do have a problem with is the desire to do nothing but be angry, obnoxious & make noise in two minutes. Is that the best creativity you have? Of course, I'll say this now & someday find myself in a death metal band doing the same ... I know how life goes! You can be noisy & have something interesting going on. Those aren't contradictions. While you can also make interesting noise. BS touch on it for one moment with the title track which is a slow plodder where the notes ring out allowing them to be clear in between the distortion & there becomes two sounds playing off each other, the note & then its cast-off. But, that's the only track that leaves me with anything. Is there a point to this other than be noisy, disruptive & shocking with song titles about death like "Tied To The Stake" that sings out: "Feeling the wires cut into your wrists/you know that there is no escape/Screaming for death as limbs fall to the floor/you will die tied to the stake" ... not that you can understand any of that or really need to. I find it hard to endorse bands like this when I do hear black metal bands really doing something interesting that's more than just making noise ... & actually have rhythm & melody & interesting lyrics. The Militants & the Kalling both come noisily to mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment