I picked this up on a whim because I like Mexican bands and figured it might be cool. It's not bad, though it could definitely be better. It's basically raging death/grind with tons of speed and a good amount of technicality, throwing around lots of breakneck changes and bordering on being somewhat chaotic. For the most part there's a decent mix of blasting speeds and slower death metal breaks, with plenty of midpaced riffing in between... of course using the grind standard of scathing high screams and brutal low growls, often layered. "Intifadah" is much slower and more destructive, with a killer melodic lead run at the start, so it immediately jumps out as a true individual amongst a lot of songs that tend to blur together and sound the same. There's far more feeling to the rhythms, and I wish that more of the songs went in that direction, because it does get boring after awhile. The recording is definitely on the messy side of things, and that can be problematic, but I can deal with it for the most part. Ignoring the fact that some of the tones are too raw and dirty, they really just need to work on clearing up and evening out the mix. I love the fact that the bassist does his thing and strays from following the guitar parts, but the vocals and drums often tend to dominate, so the guitars need to be a bit smoother and up front. The layout's not that great, I think the cover looks pretty cool, but everything is a little dirty and kind of sloppy. All of the lyrics are in Spanish and appear over top of pictures that sort of deal with the content of the songs, and under the CD tray and on the back of the booklet are images of corporate logos mixed with swastikas, and an American flag with swastikas on it with president Bush stuck in a big pile of shit. The lyrics often hit on socio-political issues as well, so it's cool that the band generally has a message at work. I definitely think these guys are tight players and competent musicians, but this disc is a bit boring in its redundancy. With a little work they could really do some shredding, it's just a matter of diversifying their songwriting a bit and trying to clean up the sound just a notch or two.
[Magnicidio]
Running time - 30:38, Tracks: 12
[Notable tracks: Intifadah, Pendejos, Violo el Cielo Violo el Infierno]
Genocide - [email protected], [email protected]
