Homoiratus "Apocalypse" CD
[Crimes Against Humanity]
I haven't heard anything from this Greek band since a few years ago when the "Human Consumes Human" full-length came out, and I feel similarly about this record in that it's not bad, but it's not doing much for me. I'm sort of surprised to see the band turn up on Crimes Against Humanity Records now, as despite their political stance and grindcore influences, these songs are definitely in much more of a moshy sort of vein, with prominent grooves to the rhythms and such. Admittedly there's more dissonance this time out, and that does help (just check out the amazing layers of discordant notes and chords in "The Age of Numbers"), as do the faster and more classically oriented death metal riffs, but the overall songwriting still falls a little flat for me. Some of the groovier stuff really kills the vibe, and honestly the more grind oriented stuff isn't all that powerful because they never maximize the intensity of their faster tempos. Plus, a lot of the midpaced runs sound very similar to one another from track to track, so the 40-minute running time can wear thin due to a lack of variety with the big picture as well. They've been compared to "Brutal Truth and Groinchurn with some Rotten Sound mixed in", but I disagree... unless you also throw in a significant level of early Fear Factory or something like that to account for the groove factor and some of the pseudo industrial uses of samples or noisy textures on rare occasion. "E-Land Phobia" is among the few tracks that takes the groovy style into a more energetic realm, though some of the staccato stuff kind of overrides the track's strengths... it still stands out in the end. "Equipollence", however, ends the disc with an intro of slick clean guitars and slow, pounding distorted chords with a total running time of more than six minutes and some of the doomiest atmospheres herein - complete with filtered spoken vocals and massive layers of midpaced dissonance and subtle melody that I truly fucking enjoy. Great work on that one. The recording's pretty good. It could be better, but I'm not bothered by anything. The guitar tone is nice and chunky which makes sense with the prominence of midpaced chord progressions, the drums and vocals sound fine, etc. I'm not making out much bass, but other than that the mix is cohesive and works out. I think the drums are a little thin, or perhaps the guitars and vocals lack brightness, but minimal tweaking would set them straight, and this already sounds effective enough. The layout does look damn good on this one, with lots of photography (including one small photo per track alongside the lyrics) and a consistent color scheme with simple, clean text. The lyrics are cool too, tackling topics like greed, the abuse of science and technology, nuclear annihilation, and so on. "The light I cherished has burned my eyes, And so I envied the blind, for they were not witness to my downfall, witness to our downfall." I don't know. These guys are fucking great with the darker dissonant riffs that use independent guitar parts together to create a thick wall of sound, but I can't hang with a lot of the chunkier rhythmic elements in this particular set of songs. If they were to keep the socio-political thread intact while focusing more on the musical angles of "The Age of Numbers" or "Equipollence" they'd really be onto something. (6/10)
Running time - 39:58, Tracks: 12
[Notable tracks: The Age of Numbers, E-Land Phobia, Equipollence]
Crimes Against Humanity Records - http://www.cahrecords.com

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