Okay, within the first two minutes of this record you'll get groovy nu-metal rhythms, blasting grind, spacey keyboards, a few samples, and then the vocals finally kick in about a minute later - filtered low growls that are impossible to decipher. The first not-so-groovy track is "Cross Pollination", which features D. Randall Blythe from Lamb of God on vocals, and then the acoustic instrumental "Amor Fati" follows. This is a strange disc. It's really all over the place, and that harms it, because the first (and possibly only) good song is the fifth track, "The Burden of Ubiquitous Scars", driven by arpeggiated guitars, thick bass, spoken male vocals, female singing textures, etc. I just don't like the writing. Most of the riffs are weak or out of place, the songs lack focus... I don't know. There are some awesome parts, but what's up with the nu-metal rhythms and the crappy little quirky alternate picking riffs? Most of the tracks are largely instrumental, which is fine, and they do use samples very fucking well... but why not focus on the powerful atmospheric portions of the music and develop that angle rather than throwing in all this other stuff that's just not that good? I mean, there's grind, southern tinged sludge, a little doom, some Neurosis-esque semi tribal elements... some of which is great, and a lot of which is just random junk. I can't get a grasp on what they were going for. The recording's alright. The drums are clear and sound pretty damn natural, the bass tone is solid (turn it up a little), I don't mind the guitars or vocals, etc. I definitely think the keyboards are pointless as they clash with the music and serve no real purpose in adding anything to the compositions, but other than a few rough edges this sounds good for a self-released affair. But I'm not into the packaging here. It's alright I guess, but most of the artwork just looks a little... I don't know... it's not right for this. It just has this weird sort of dark folksy look or something, and the entire thing is a like a weird professionally pressed CD-R that's not quite "professional" as far as ink quality, paper quality, etc. There's some text in the booklet that I believe is a set of incomplete lyrics that aren't credited to particular song titles, but definitely have a consistent theme: "The greatest crime in history was against the whole human race, when they stole our divinity from us. Just when we had finally realized our divine nature, they stole it from us and gave it to one man. Then turned the rest of us into sheep..." I'll pass as a whole. Hints of potential exist but this is a confusing record. Fairly original, I'll give it that... but they're not emphasizing their strengths at all. Most people would stop the CD before finishing the first track since it opens with that crappy nu-metal part. Go figure.
[Friends and Enemies]
Running time - 46:03, Tracks: 11
[Notable tracks: The Burden of Ubiquitous Scars]
Gollum - http://www.gollum.cc
