Welcome back, Metal-Jerks Metalheads.  I’m back with a bit of deviation from my normal review patterns, but I felt that it was time I switch it up a bit, and review something that is completely outside of my usual fanfare, which would bring us to the second offering from deathcore giants Whitechapel, titled “This Is Exile“, which is actually their Metal Blade Records debut.  I suppose I’ll get this out of the way first: I hate deathcore.  I hate it with a passion, and think that all it does is speak to the lowest common denominator and make everything that is good about death metal completely trivial and take a backseat to the ever-prevalent “breakdowns” and endless cliches that plague the sub-genre.  For the sake of journalistic integrity, I am going to try and review this album as fairly as I can, and who knows, I actually might be pleasantly surprised by the end of this review.  Never say never…

I have noticed that a lot of people seem to hold this band in such high regard when it comes to the deathcore monicker that you cannot discuss the sub-genre without being pummeled verbally about how this band is single-handedly making deathcore evolve into a completely different beast.  While this may be true in some aspects, I feel that the deathcore trend has already stagnated before it even got off the ground.

The first thing I will say about this album is that it does absolutely nothing to try and set itself apart from the rest of the seemlessly never-ending inadequate musical clones of one another.  One of the first things I’ve noticed that may even try to set these guys apart from the rest of the A-tuned masses is that they have three guitarists, rather than the usual two.  While this may sound like a good theory when written on paper, the execution is far from stellar.  If you cannot accomplish your “heavy” sound with two guitarists and a bassist, then you are doing it wrong.  All the third guitarist has done is drown out the bass more than it would have already been.  Not once throughout all of “This Is Exile” have I been wowed and thought “Man, I’m glad that third guitarist was there to make that breakdown more noticeable!“  It is obviously a gimmick that is far from perfect, and something should really be done about this.

Before I get into what else makes this album incredibly predictable and lack-luster, I will actually throw Whitechapel a bone and say that they are quite good at injecting different melodic licks where the music calls for them, even if it is normally at the apex of a generic breakdown, but, there’s only so far that melody alone can take you.  Thankfully, they seemed to try quite hard on the track “To All That Are Dead” to at least make it seem like they are not one-trick ponies and are capable with different song-structures, which shows that they do have a little bit of promise as a band.

Now, let’s get to the riffs.  While I can certainly see the appeal of the endless “dun dunnn…. dundundun dudun…” riff-style, it really leaves quite a lot to be desired, when all 11 tracks on this album are filled to the brim with faux-slams and pitninja-induced breakdowns.  They do try to stray away from that never-ending pattern, and normally go into quite the predictable speedy-yet-melodic thrash/death metal riff, which immediately transcends into another generic breakdown, time and time again; “Somatically Incorrect” is easily the worst offender on the album in regards to this complaint.  The guitarists are certainly more than capable of playing their instruments, but when it comes to innovative-riff-thinking, they are no where to be found.  There is also the matter of trying to inject quite a bit of Bay Area technical death metal, which is easily done best by the likes of Decrepit Birth, Odious Mortem, and Severed Savior, fail to make a dent in my wandering attention span.

The drumming, while consistent and competent, is incredibly boring; almost as if they were afraid to let the drummer deviate from constantly following the riffs, almost note-for-note.  Really, there isn’t a lot else to be said about it other than it is probably the least offensive thing on the album, and while triggered, not to the point where it is so obnoxious that it makes this album unlistenable.  Also, the vocals just seem to support my stance on most deathcore bands trying to one-up each other by emulating one another, meaning that his growls sound no different than any others of their ilk, and will howl once those speedy riffs show up again, and growl when the slow-and-bludgeoning chugga-chugga riffs show their faces once again.

To be fair, I really expected “This Is Exile” to be much worse than it was, thinking that it would be offensive to all five of my senses, but in reality, Whitechapel as a whole are young, but more than capable of making good music, which is quite evident by “To All That Are Dead“, which was the only track I could keep my attention on.  The album is just really unimaginative, predictable, and boring, but still better than what I originally expected.  However, this is still miles ahead of whatever garbage Suicide Silence or Waking The Cadaver are continuing to spew out to the masses.  All in all, if you are already of the thought that there are no redeeming qualities of deathcore, or that all of the bands sound alike, you won’t like this album; however, if you love the slow plodding moshpit riffs and plentiful breakdowns and competent melody, you will enjoy this album and this band.

]]> http://metal-jerks.com/2009/07/23/whitechapel-this-is-exile/feed/ 2 http://metal-jerks.com/2008/12/27/katalepsy-musick-brings-injuries/ http://metal-jerks.com/2008/12/27/katalepsy-musick-brings-injuries/#comments Sat, 27 Dec 2008 10:11:44 +0000 douchemike http://metal-jerks.com/?p=521

Katalepsy at myspace

If a bunch of sissy hardcore boys make a facsimile of death metal with breakdowns and shitty gimmick vocals then it is deathcore and thus bad but if a bunch of guys singing about gore and death and whatever with long hair do the same its “slam death metal” apparently. One is the bane of extreme metal and the other is a perfectly acceptable evolution of Death Metal despite both sounding the same. As it turns out Katalepsy aren’t a bunch of pale skinny mid-western white boys with stretched ear lobes and Atticus hoodies, but a bunch of tough as nails Russian dudes.  They might as well be the former as that’s the music they make though.

I have nothing against mixing Hardcore with Death Metal when it is done with the imagination, innovation and an eye to detail that all good music is made with, let’s be honest the shit to good ratio in Deathcore is pretty high. The breakdowns on “Musick Brings Injuries” are more On Broken Wings than Obituary and the Death Metal segments are more repetitive than you would find in Bona Fide Death Metal seeming to sound like a  Down syndrome version of Mortician. There’s conveniently a Mortician cover on this album along with a hilarious Deathcore version of “Symphony of Destruction”. That means that a quarter of the time on this album is other peoples material and its better constructed than Katalepsys original tracks, which being one of the artists in question is Mortician is really saying something.

The thing that really sucks though is the vocals. What these knuckleheads want to be is more “extreme” than anyone else. They can’t play faster, heavier or more technically than anyone else, so they make the vocals more “extreme” which in this case means making them sound like a cross between a pig and a cricket and never singing in time once. Not in an endearing Paul Baloff way but in can’t go more than 5 seconds before going out of sync with the musicians. It seems that since your average deathco…. Oops I mean Slam Death musician can’t play better than anyone else that have to make the vocalist make as many silly ill fitting sounds as possible to be the most “BROOTAL”.

At the end of the day this variety of metal as exhibited by Katalepsy and their much more musically proficient but still vocally untalented forefathers Devourment has as much influence over the overall death metal scene as Velvet Caccoon or Les Legions Noire had over the Black Metal scene; a lot of dweebs on the internet talking about it, but nothing really happening. If all these “XSLAMXDEATHX” bands sound like Katalepsy, then that’s certainly a very good thing indeed.

Meshuggah at Myspace

Let’s face it the quality of Meshuggah’s material has been on a downward spiral since 1998’s “Chaosphere”. 2002’s “Nothing” was a mid paced boring trudge and 2005’s “Catch Thirty-Three” was an overly pretentious journey to the musical equivalent of the middle of nowhere with nothing to show for it. The problem with both of those releases is they were too obtuse and for want of a better term ‘mathematical’. You are probably saying “but the whole point behind Meshuggah’s music is their use of complex almost mathematical rhythms; how can their music be too mathematical!” The problem is when the mathematics overpowers all the other elements of the bands formula so that it becomes a staid series of theoretical musings in obscure time sequences and forgets the adrenalin rush and off kilter momentum that made songs such as “Future Breed Machine” and “New Millennium Cyanide Christ” so memorable.

The songs on “Nothing” and “Catch Thirty-Three” had the momentum of a bulldozer stuck in quicksand and instead of making you want hurl yourself around your room instead lulled one into a feeling of drowsiness. “ObZen” at first listen seems to have rectified this problem with the first song “Combustion” which is a full throttle poly-rhythm attack that engages the senses like having a hive full to the brim of hornets flung at you at top speed. In theory if there are a few fast songs on “ObZen” then that should allow the slow ones to be more memorable as they won’t blend into one featureless mid paced chug a la “Nothing”.

However, this is not the case as the next six songs are mid paced and whilst tracks such as “Lethargica” and “This Spiteful Snake” have unnerving yet atmospheric discordance that the material on “Catch Thirty-Three” could never hope to achieve. Unfortunately tracks two to seven to seem to blur into half an hour of mathematical chugging nearly always at the same tempo that betrays however unworldly and mind-blowing this material may appear to be at first listen, when presented like this with not enough fat cut away from the meat, the Meshuggah sound seems as formulaic as Cannibal Corpse or Dark Funeral.

“Pravus” is a faster paced and less samey track which helps to some degree to bring any listeners attention that may have wandered back to the fore. It’s too late though as it’s the penultimate track and its now the turn of the nine and half minute album closer “Dancers To A Discordant System” to finish off the job of disappointing us once more. A moment roughly around 5:45 is oddly reminiscent of Gojira which isn’t surprising given the influence Meshuggah have had upon them, but it further hammers it home that barring a surprise return to form, Meshuggah’s time as innovators and leader seems to be over. With one brilliant track with the rest ranging from “kinda alright” to “deserving to be on “nothing” ” this has proven to be a disappointing album.

Devildriver at Myspace

There comes a time in most trend-hoppers time when the first trend they attached themselves to dies and they hop onto the next. This doesn’t just apply to teenagers but to musicians. Bullet for my Valentine, Atreyu, and Norma Jean all started out as rap/nu metal bands, but perhaps the most famous trend hopper of modern metal is Dez Fafara. Fafara made his name donning fishnet tights on his arms and a  terrible gothic haircut fronting stereotypical nu metal band Coal Chamber. When the wheels came off that wagon, Fafara created a new band aimed at targeting the new trend in metal in an absolutely cynical fashion. With their Melodic death influenced metalcore sound, their boneheaded lyrics and the ubiquitously annoying Fafara, Devildriver seemed custom made to appeal to every “true metal” teenage knucklehead wanting to get into “the real heavy shit” in the most superficial fashion possible.

The one thing that strikes you about “The Last Kind Words” is how falsely perfect it sounds. It sounds like it was constructed by a committee to appeal to a certain audience. The chord progression and musical ingredients are tried and trusted to a level that sounds sterile and stale. Elements are taken from every obvious source and used in an exceedingly obvious way. Imagine the first band you formed with your mates in your teens. It was probably influenced by what can be called training wheels metal, (eg, Pantera, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer etc) as that’s the stuff you knew and loved. Now imagine a bunch of guys with 10 years experience in music theory who know exactly what they are doing trying to do the same thing but with a modern “core” edge.

That might be a dream come true to a lot of metal fans, but it’s not mine. Metal, even accessible and commercially viable metal has to have a real dangerous edge to appeal to the discerning metal fan in even the slightest capacity. Metallica, Iron Maiden, Pantera and co took influences from bands that weren’t popular then and certainly aren’t popular now. The same can be said for Opeth, In Flames, Lamb of God, Shadows Fall etc whatever you may say about their current career choices. Devildriver are a lot heavier than the likes of Bullet for my Valentine and Avenged Sevenfold but they are just as unthreatening and safe. Just like Coal Chamber are barely remembered today, I doubt Devildriver for all their popularity will be remembered after they split up. Just like Coal Chamber this shit is just too tame and teen friendly to be long lasting.

Malefice at Myspace (chugga chugga WEE!)

Malefice are getting quite big in the UK with the kids. That if anything else should tip you off that these guys aren’t going to appeal to most of you. Malefice specialise in the sound of metalcore circa 2003/2004 and if this record came out then I’d at least see what the hypes about. “Entities” takes Unearths poor structuring, As I lay Dying’s Melodic Death plagiarism, Lamb of Gods boneheaded good ol boy ambience and Chimaira’s 100% pure distilled shite-ness and turns them into something quite horrid. If you like those 4 bands you will probably like this, but if you hate them, well you’ll despise this.

I think subconsciously they took influence from Dragonforce as apart from the occasional curveball such as Howard Jones-esque clean vocals (which is as curveballs go is positively straight in this instance) the tracks are near enough exactly the same. They start off with a pseudo-melodic death intro go into a Lamb of God style verse, going into a  breakdown with some melodic leads over the tops of it style chorus and so forth. Now if it was A B A B it would be pretty awful in itself, but in-between those are the occasional half-arsed solo’s and a whole battalion of breakdowns. You have your Lamb of god breakdowns, your Chimaira breakdowns and occasionally just for variety some unusual and relatively unorthodox Unearth breakdowns.

The breakdowns usually last for between a third and a fourth of the songs length. Unless you are Earth Crisis you really can’t get away with that. There was a reason that Obituary and Grave only let the breakdowns on “Cause of Death” and “Into the Grave” respectively last for an exquisitely short period of the songs timespan. If Malefice cut the amount of breakdowns in their songs down, they would be horribly average instead of just horrible. If you want to play metalcore where you play endless breakdowns then play tough guy hardcore there’s a whole sub-genre of that sub-genre of a sub-genre dedicated to that. It just doesn’t work at all if for the remaining part of the songs timespan you play melodic death-lite you learned by osmosis from various metalcore outfits.

Put this together with some retarded tough guy lyrics that even Phil Anselmo would be ashamed of, and the gradual realisation that Malefice are so addicted to breakdowns that sometimes their verse guitar lines are basically incredibly fast breakdowns, then this is another sorry example of British metal gone wrong.

The story of Amenti is one that is infamous at least in British Metal circles. This thread gives the full story, but for a shortened version the tale goes something like this: A UK band allegedly bankrolled by one of the members parents messes allegedly around a bunch of UK promoters but allegedly goes too far when they allegedly somehow got hold of the contract to book Destruction’s UK tour and allegedly messed it up. A furore erupted with allegations being made that this allegedly left wing band, had a member who was allegedly racist. The story allegedly climaxed with Amenti allegedly splitting up 3 of the 4 members allegedly forming a new band a day later with the same tour dates but with their identities obscured by new names and masks.

There’s a whole lot of ‘allegedly’ in there, and to be honest I doubt anyone will ever know the whole or exact truth about this affair. Then there’s the music. Amenti released one album entitled “Under the Dying Sun”. The music formula here is a mixture of Mid 90’s Slayer meets Stampin Ground during the time they crossed firmly from Hardcore into Metal with stylistic touches from Exodus, Hatebreed, Biohazard and Iron Maiden. The album maintains a solid and impressive sense of groove and the guitar work is above average if not amazing. The drums were seemingly recorded using the same techniques used with St Anger and then rerecorded using a fisher price junior tape recorder, but for that the drumming is quite diverse and impacts to a considerable degree on the overall sound. Singer Mike sounds like Randy Blythe if Randy Blythe could actually hold a note and this vocal approach works well with the material.

Overall this is what most reviewers would term “a promising if not stellar debut”. True, I doubt I would listen to it again out of choice and neither would most of you, but it would have gained them fans among more commercially minded metal fan whilst being good enough for the rest of us not to hate upon and until about 6 months ago in the UK there was a sizeable online buzz about them. That buzz was extinguished when allegations about their business models were made by various sources including former touring partner and thrash elder statesmen Schmier of Destruction.

From then their trajectory was firmly downwards as more and more allegations were made by quite a few different people. If they did do any of the things they were accused of doing then they threw everything they ever earned in their 2 years of operating away. It’s a pity as if they had stayed honest (first assuming of course that they were dishonest in the first place) they probably would have been a big a draw on the uk commercial metal circuit in a few years as Panic Cell and Raging Speedhorn are now. As it is, for right or wrong none of the members will be able to show their faces in the British metal scene for quite some time to come.

Annotations of an Autopsy at Myspace (BREEEEEEEEEEEE!)

For a site named Metal Jerks, we really haven’t been that horrible to any of the bands we’ve reviewed. From my own personal standpoint this is because I usually choose to review albums that I like, and even the ones who do disappoint me, I can at least have respect for what they were trying to achieve. Time to review a few bands I have zero respect for then. First up is Deathcore “sensations” Annotations of an Autopsy who inexplicably rose in popularity due to 14 year old’s on myspace who haven’t heard one actual death metal band, and who’s knowledge of hardcore starts and ends with this week’s copy of Kerrang.

The first track after the intro is the titular opener “Welcome to Sludge City” and the first 30 seconds consists of an exceedingly slow generic breakdown with the sound of a teenage boy trying to do Pig Squeals and ending up running out of breath (viva pro-tools and cut and paste!), with some yobbish gang chants that exclaim “she bleeds from every fucking hole”. So far so shit. This then gives way to a cookie cutter 3 bar pseudo-death metal riff that is repeated over and over again before another very similar riff comes into play and so forth. All the time, the asthmatic sow continues to pant and cough and in attempt to try sound “BR00TAL” or whatever gets teenage boys who wear white belts wet these days. Eventually our good friend, the generic breakdown returns and the clearasil powered XHCX choir breaks into a loving chorus of “when I’m done with you, you won’t have a cunt left”. I guess they will have to save their money up and buy another real doll if that happens.

The rest of the EP is the same but with the wheezing swine having his pathetic squeals shifted up to a ludicrous pitch and some out of time attempts at mathcore within the pseudo-death metal. Its deeply unsettling that the new generation took death metal, one of the few genres in any sort of music where all that mattered was how good you were, not how much you were hyped or how good looking your singer was, and attempted to turn it into another revolting cash cow based on image instead of music.

It wouldn’t be so bad, if these kids listened to actual death metal but apparently those bands whether they formed in 1989 or last month are “old mans metal” and we granddads should get with the times and throw our Autopsy (who I’m guessing AOAA haven’t actually heard of) and Morbid Angel records away and listen to a bunch of fuckwits raping death metal as they have a “buff” lead singer and loads of friends on myspace.

You Know what? Fuck that! You know why? Apart from the obvious reasons of taste, sanity, and intellect, most of the “myspace metal” generation will renounce their musical tastes when they reach 18 and go to University and start listening to NME approved Indie. I’ve seen it happen with Nu Metal, Pop Punk and Emo and I’ll see it happen with this. Six or Seven years ago the likes of   Sugar Coma, Sw1tched, The Kennedy Soundtrack and a load of other shitty nu metal acts were popular. Now no one remembers them at all. That is Annotations of an Autopsy’s fate and it can’t come soon enough for me or any other real metal fan.

Gutworm at Myspace

Gutworm mix the aggressive type of fast-paced sludge metal that the Northamptonshire area became famous for in the days of Raging Speedhorn and Scurge with relatively accessible extreme metal à la The Haunted, Strapping Young Lad, At the Gates and Gojira. The result is something that won’t tick any metal stereotype’s boxes. It’s too proletarian and uncool for the scene kids, far too heavy for mainstream metal fans, and too similar to Pantera in places for the extreme metal fans.

Gutworm are a band who will never find a niche, which is in their favour since they’re not pandering to the one crowd. But personally, I think ‘Disfigured Narcissus’ is a step backwards from ‘Ruin the Memory’. There’s less emphasis on their death metal elements, with a perfect example being ‘Imperfect Harmony’, sounding like Crowbar French-kissing Lamb of God. ..And not in a good way!

There’s no equivalent here to ‘What You Are’, the clear standout track of their debut, and as the record progresses you can tell whether part of a particular track is engaging by how metalcore it sounds. Gutworm can pull off sludgy, groovy death metal but I think they might have miscalculated by adding metalcore into their sound. This was never going to be an album that purist death metal fans would enjoy, but it even lacks that crispness and clarity that made ‘Ruin the Memory’ so good.

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.