Force Fed Flesh "The Human Virus" CD
[Malicious Intent]
Ehhh, no thanks. This is competent yet extremely boring brutal death metal that has a pretty significant focus on groove. Most elements about the release are alright, but there's nothing about it that's memorable or exceptional in any way, and the songwriting is actually pretty uninteresting to me, which is where the release suffers the most. The songs run anywhere from a minute-and-a-half to nearly seven minutes and tend to just slap riffs together, jumping from biting tremolo picking riffs and standard death metal runs to burly power chord rhythms that are a little groovy for me. The vocals are dominated by low growls, but occasionally throw in quick midrange sneers for variety. It's nothing new, but the only reason I'm not into it is because the songs are insanely boring. There's really not one riff on the entire EP that jumps out and hits me, and most of the songs end up sounding the same in the end. Some of the tracks are actually really bad, too. For instance, the staccato rhythms and irritatingly caustic metalcore chords in "Crucifixion" give way to horrendous tremolo picking riffs and the same slow, monotonous shifts between winding notes and moshy slam crap with a few random bursts of speed, etc. And what the fuck's up with the noodly intro to "Postmortem Rot Pile", with all the weird clean guitars, returning later in some "humorous" ode to "Eye of the Tiger" riffs? It's a lame song that just repeats two lines of lyrics over an obnoxious churning groove anyway, but still... there's no reason for that. There's another such "joke" track at the end of the disc after a little bit of silence, so... I guess these guys have a lighter side, too. Not my thing, but whatever. The recording's alright, but the guitar tone needs work more than anything. I think the drums sound fairly strong, the bass tone is nice and defined and forces itself to be heard, and the vocals are decent as well. But the guitars? They're a little too thin and the distortion has a ragged edge to it that doesn't really do much for me. Were the guitars ultra heavy, but with a little smoother, chunkier distortion, some of the riffs herein might come across as a somewhat stronger. In no way would a better guitar sound be the saving grace of this EP, as bland songwriting is the only key problem, but... it is something to consider in the future. The layout looks alright but I'm not into the scratchy looking font that they've chosen for all of the lyrics at all, because it looks cheesy and it's a little hard to read. The design's certainly nothing exciting, but you can tell they put some work into making it look fairly organized, and I've seen far worse, so... they're alright there for the most part. But the lyrics? Abysmal. "Chop off the head, Mashing, Exposing the brain, Axe smashing through, Dig into you..." Terrible, terrible stuff. I haven't seen lyrics this bad in awhile, I have to say. Not that I care, as I'll restate that this entire EP is exceedingly lackluster, so... I don't know what else to say. All I can basically do is state they did alright on the recording and presentation of their work, but the songwriting is weak as hell and they still need to keep working at it. (3/10)
Running time - 20:32, Tracks: 6
[Notable tracks: I don't like any of 'em]
Malicious Intent Records - http://www.maliciousintentrecords.com

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