Review: Committee of Thirteen “s/t” CD

This is probably going to be a long review because there's a lot for me to ramble about on this one. The band is a side project of Marc Rizzo (Ill Ni?o, Soulfly) and some of the songs herein were written for his defunct Coretez project, but the end result bears no real semblance to Soulfly at all, despite a good number of connections to Ill Ni?o. Now, I've always been a fan of Ill Ni?o. Nu-metal or not, borderline goofy or not, I think they write catchy songs and I like the stuff. Fuck it. Committee of Thirteen is similar in the blending of metal with melody and accents of additional tribal sounding percussion and acoustic guitars, as well as some slightly groovy rhythms and nu-metal types of singing/shouting vocals, but sans a few critical faults that are really killing me, there's a shitload of potential here, and under the right circumstances this band would crush Ill Ni?o. The groove factor is kept in check with this stuff, so there's nothing overtly chunky or annoyingly simplistic, and the vocal performance never gets too forced or cheesily overdramatic either. The writing is also way more metal, with some outright thrash riffs on occasion and some blazing melodic leads that totally kick ass (check out the faster tempos and hints at melodic Swedish playing in "A New Beginning"). I don't think the added percussion is really necessary, and it kind of makes the band sound too much like Ill Ni?o, but the acoustic passages work nicely and at times the energy of the added drumming does add some tangible spice. Now, onto those unfortunate flaws... First off, there are some vocal issues. The dude's got a good voice and changes up the delivery a lot, but it still lacks something, and the singing definitely falters sometimes. "Searching", for example, has some painful areas where the notes are way off, and I think the recording has some role in it as well. And that brings me to flaw #2: The sound isn't quite there. It's a little raw and underdeveloped for what the band really needs. Some of the guitar tones are kind of unnatural and rugged (mainly during the lead lines - the clean guitars are beautifully perfect), the drumming is a little thin, I'm not making out much bass, and the vocals are too dry. The end result is just too flat. I know budget is a concern with this stuff, but with a suitably polished recording the better songs on this effort would be massively more effective. The layout is also definitely weak as hell, I have to say. It's nothing but bland abstract artwork that looks way too Photoshopped, plain text, and one photo of some trees. The cover definitely blows, while the back cover is a bit more interesting visually. The lyrics are omitted as well, which is a shame, as the brief text that is included points to some potential in my opinion: "Is it our destiny to follow this road to extinction, or will we till the soil and breed new life again?" I don't know, I have to say I think this full-length sounds premature, a similar looking/sounding demo would've made more sense, but... there's a lot to work with here. Looking at the big picture the songwriting still needs to grow into itself, as there are some uneventful or weak tracks, and sometimes the stronger pieces wander around a little, but when they nail it I'm all for it. My biggest concern is the vocal performance, though. The recording is a major issue but they're on the right path there. Punch things up a little and smooth it over, you know? That will also help the singing sound more efficient, but I think the dude still needs to work on his harmonizing and whatnot a little more to sound truly convincing and emotional ("She" is a pretty damn good song but the vocals are certainly the weak link there). The solos and the thrash riffs are fucking awesome, and some of the catchier melodic portions are hinting at greatness, so I'll look forward to hearing their next effort, as I imagine it'll be a progression. This is definitely way better than anyone would ever expect based on the visual presentation. As a music fan it actually starts to piss me off when I hear CD's like this that could be so fucking good were a few minor circumstances shifted around a bit, but all I can do is hope for the best next time around.