Here comes more brutal death metal from Illinois. I'm not really digging this one too much. To start off with, everything about this layout embodies what I hate about death metal and what I feel holds the genre back to an immeasurable degree. The artwork is goofy and immature, some of the imagery is of a rather low quality, there are about a million different fonts used in the layout (and they all suck), the text is busy and hard to read (no thanks to the equally busy background textures), there's no consistent form of arrangement or color scheme... it's just a mess. And lyrically? Oh christ, don't even get me started. "You place your mouth on my holy member trying to rid yourself of all that is wrong. I'll take your head in my hand. Forcing you to vomit, your sins upon me, blasphemy. You are now on your knees. I am the only one who can bring you forgiveness. You can taste the semen of your lord..." Fuck that shit. I know this is just another song lashing out against the church (as are several of the other tracks on this disc), but that is some of the most ridiculous crap I've read in awhile. I cannot respect that shit. Trying not to let that affect my opinion of the music was less of a problem once I realized that the music was actually pretty bland. It's generally fast, blasting death metal with vocals that range from the gargled "urp urp" stuff to more of a midrange scream. When they slow things down they actually drop some solid shit. I can get into the slower riffing and stuff. But the fast parts really don't do much for me, and I hate the vocal style. I mean, shit, most of these songs are less than three minutes long, and I'm still bored after about 10 minutes. The writing just isn't that hot. There's no real cohesion to the changes, the riffs aren't interesting, and few moments harness much power. The arrangements are just slapped together with no real consideration for transitions or anything like that. At least the production is decent. I'd drop the vocals back a bit so they wouldn't be so disruptive (it's not like you can understand even one syllable of the lyrics anyway) and turn up the bass, but the guitars are thick as a motherfucker and keep the problematic aspects of the drum tones in check. There's also a CD-Rom portion of the disc with a bunch of information about the label, sort of like a mini website. Why? It really doesn't make sense to me since this is an actual band's release, not a label sampler. This is another in a long line of death metal releases that are far from essential.
[Forever Underground]
Running time - 31:44, Tracks: 10
[Notable tracks: pick a number, I can't say any stand out]
Forever Underground Records - http://www.foreverunderground.com
