5

Deathly dull

Death metal in the old style, the kind where you have to have really long hair so you can ignore the audience when you're playing live by hanging your head down and covering your face completely with it, the kind where you pick a key and play the whole album in it, the kind where you can play fast or slow it somehow sounds the same.

I wrote very recently about how too much of the same thing dilutes the effect after a while and that's something that this release suffers from. By track five you've heard it all even though there's still another five to go. Chris Barnes who used to be with Cannibal corpse has a deep guttural growl that has about as much variation as the wardrobe of your average computer nerd. Looking in my wardrobe that's none.

He seems to have brought some of Corpses lyrical content with him too, chopping up people, blood, dismemberment, blood (again), a grazed knee and a cold sore. Sorry I'm having a problem taking this seriously. Just have a listen to 'zombie executioner' to see what I mean. I've heard this all before many times and I'm sure you have too, as it doesn't take anything to the next level or even up to the current level we've come to expect from a modern band.

The fact that the album was written in the studio in twelve days might have something to do with it, I'll be the first to complain when bands take three years to produce a forty minute album but twelve days seems to be a bit hasty to me, it would explain why the songs sound like they were the first thing they came up with and all seem like extensions of each other.

If you have very long straight hair and no imagination, are in to lyrics about chopping people up, have painted your bedroom black and get a burn if you go out in the daytime, want music that will make your mum worry about the direction you're taking and think that death is something to think about on those long evenings alone in your room then this could be the album for you. If on the other hand you like death/black metal that has had some care and thought put into it there are far better albums out there just waiting for you to discover them, they'll still scare your mum but they might just entertain you at the same time.