Austrian Death Machine – Total Brutal

Posted by Pugs Malone on July 13th, 2008 filed in Core

Austrian Death Machine at Myspace

Austrian Death Machine is a one-man Arnold Schwarzenegger tribute project by As I Lay Dying frontman Tim Lambesis. When I first heard of this, I was ambivalent, as I liked the concept, but knew that As I Lay Dying was a metalcore band, and that genre has quite a bad reputation (I have avoided it completely until now). Well, the album wasn’t quite as bad as I feared, but I can’t quite recommend it, either.

First of all, Lambesis doesn’t even attempt to sound like Arnold. The between-song skits and a few songs feature an Arnold impersonator (not Lambesis), but this impression is somewhat inconsistent. Lambesis’ vocals are just generic metalcore yelling, which doesn’t really fit the goofy tone I expected from an Arnold tribute. The drums are a mixture of Lambesis’ playing and a drum machine, and they don’t really stand out, while the bass is barely audible. However, Lambesis’ guitar work is quite good; I would’ve guessed that he was a guitarist and not a singer had I gone in knowing nothing other than that this was a one-man project. The songwriting is also decent; the lyrics are amusing and the soloing is quite good. I also have to commend Lambesis for writing not one, but two songs based on Kindergarten Cop (“Who is Your Daddy, and What Does He Do?” and “It’s Not a Tumor”.)

All in all, this album isn’t horrible, it’s just pretty generic. I’d definitely recommend Arnocorps over this, but metalcore fans will probably enjoy it.