»22nd February 2009

Music Reviews Ahoy

So I recently went out and bought a bunch of new albums, to get in there before every record shop in the country goes out of business. This is the result, here are some reviews.

Bombsword - Tomb of God (2009) (Idle Records)

Bombsword are a new-wave speed thrash act who formed in 2005 in Skokie, Illinois. They play a mixture of old school thrash songs most directly comparable to Testament or Kreator with a dose of modern american metal. This terrifying new second album 'Tomb of God' is noticeably more ambitious than 2007's 'Enter the Apocalypse' and features more in the way of lengthy songs and even closes with a seven minute instrumental, the truly epic 'Darkness of the Day'. Thankfully gone is the drought on solos, with Scott Henn put to fantastic use throughout the album. Additionally, the presence of drummer Franco Orlando is stronger on this album, and his jazz-infused fusion of various extreme metal techniques really add a maturity and atomic power to the album's overall sound.

The album opens with the title track, a furious broad-side of buzz-saw guitars and with Hal Landrette lyrics sat comfortably at the front of the mix, it's almost as if he could spit right in your ear. The album tends to sag in the middle with a few too many songs that sound like out-takes from a Lamb of God album, additionally, whoever suggested the surreal death metal cover of Judas Priest's 'Turbo Lover' should be shot. The centre piece of the album is undoubtedly the fourth track 'Relentless Fire Skull', a breakneck thrash attack that seamlessly follows into fifth track 'Hanging the Hangman', a mature and thoughtful indictment of the American judicial system that builds up to a crescendo of noise before Landrette screams 'WAAAAAAARRRRRRRR' and seven minutes of trade-off solos ensue. Amazingly, this all manages not to sound like a Machine Head re-hash.

Try to imagine this as a banner stretched across an impressive, albeit small, third stage at Download '07. Then try and imagine when the crew weren't able to take it down for the next two acts unfortunate enough to follow the Bombsword on the line-up.

All in all, this is a strong release by the Skokie-quintet but you just wish they'd dispense with some of the more mainstream, unimaginative songs like 'Blood Bucket' and 'Death Hat' that sit between great songs like 'Tomb of God' and 'Nuclear Warhead'. Someone really needs to tell them that the world does not need more ridiculous covers, I mean 'Baker Street' almost worked on 'Enter the Apocalypse', but 'Turbo Lover' was just ridiculous to begin with. At its best Tomb of God reclaims a progressive thrash sound that hasn't been heard for years. The band is rumoured to be appearing at Download this year, so hopefully they'll not be lumped in with the wooden spoon bands on the third stage like they were in '07.

Extreme Destroyer - Facesmasher (2007) (AMF)

Extreme Destroyer are purveyors of what passes for grindcore in America now or maybe it's just some sort of deathcore or something. Either way, the utterly unimaginative pseudo-political lyrics that feel like a throwback to 1991 and the weak compositions make for a particularly weak fourth album. Frankly, it's a wonder they've been around for this long. After being dropped by defunct Trent-Reznor-orchestrated label Nothing they switched from a hard-edged synth-punk to this current debacle of a style. They were dropped from Nothing in 1999 and yet they still manage to rattle off albums with derivative songs slagging off the music industry.
Even though the band alternates three or four minute songs with thirty second grind attacks you are left with the distinct feeling that Matt Clayton couldn't come up with a decent riff if the Gods of grindcore were manifested to hold his hand throughout the entire songwriting process.

The only redeeming feature of the album is the first track '(S)laughter' which builds up in an almost post-metal way, only for 60 seconds mind, until vocalist Zack D. weakly screams 'Slaffter' acapella in possibly the most unintentionally hilarious moment in deathcore ever only for the song to fall apart for three minutes whilst Zack does his best Joker impression and lead guitarist Tom N detunes his guitar. The title track sounds almost identical to the second track 'Fucking Myself (The Arse)' (the laregly illegible liner notes claim it is about how society dehumanises people, or something), which also happens to sound similar to album closer 'Everything I Read Is A Lie (Systematic Bullshitting)'.
This is an awful album, avoid, avoid, avoid.

The Star Wipes - Burning It (2009) (self released)

The Star Wipes are a strange, strange band. On the face of it, their sleazy brand of old school punk rock (sleaze rock, apparently) would be pretty boring until you throw into the mix the absolutely hilarious lyrics that take pot shots at every wanting 'celebrity' figure that OK magazine could cough up in the last six months. The porn groove of 'Paris Hilton Is My Daughter And You Are Not Good Enough For Her' seamlessly gives way into the bona-fide stadium rock of 'Vote Bono'. The lead guitarist 'Andi Pandi' requires special mention for his Spinal-Tap-esque rock odysseys that punctuate every ironically formularic verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus-chorus song from beginning to end.

vocals on all but two of the tracks are actually shared between rhythm guitarist 'Gari Star' and long-time collaborator and wife 'Dani Mixx', and so every song has a hilarious toing and froing that makes you wonder how they manage to still be together as a couple. Despite being a self-release, the production on this album is actually pretty good. The album comes with a DVD of the band's 2007 Tom Cruise Tour which is just fantastic. The band employ a range of celebrity look alikes, who mingle with the crowd and generally embarass themselves during songs about their real-life counterpart, the centre-piece of the event, the Tom Cruise and Zombie-Isaac-Hayes striptease is both haunting and absolutely insane.
Especially interesting on this new album is the promise made by the band to play a free gig at the birthday party of whoever downloads the ten thousandth copy of the album from their MySpace. Josh Freese might have beaten them to the zany charity-slave-auction style rewards but you can guarantee that if The Star Wipes turned up to your birthday party, you'd at least be assured to get into Heat Magazine when the papparazzi manage to photograph pseudo-Peaches-Geldoff throwing up onto the unconvincing Wayne Rooney family lookalikes. If you don't buy this album then you're an idiot.

Freezing Fog - Black Calamitous Existence of the Forgotten Gods of Ithmyr (2001) (Bitch Prophet Records)

Scandinavian Doom mongerers Freezing Fog taken six years to record this album: Presumably they must spend a lot of time smoking pot, because it doesn't particularly show. It's a bold doom/black metal concept album that attempts to tell the story of the fall of some sort of highly derivative Lovecraftian gods at the hands of the unnamed protagonist. As can be expected the production on this album is absolutely awful, the drums are almost entirely inaudible save for incessant and weak sounding cymbal hits. Lengthy keyboard sections sound like excerpts from unreleased nineties point and click adventures, and vocalist 'Banoffles'--aside from taking his self-penned fantasy schlock way too seriously--lapses into sub-Xena 'narration' far too often.

The album features only seven songs, of which the first--'Blasted Bastard Son of Ithmyr'--is literally two and a half minutes of MIDI-arctic-wind with Banoffles idiotic narration for accompaniment. The shortest song that actually qualifies as a song clocks in at eight minutes, and that is eight minutes of tiresome alternating between muffled blastbeats, whining lead guitar, and aimless droning and feedback intended to be 'ominous'. To look for some praise for this album, when Bannofles is willing to shut up either narrating or screaming, you could perhaps hear some decent guitar work were the production not so tinny and the tacky keyboard voice parts not so dominant.
This is an awful album that at first could be passed off as a successful spoof of the genre. However, by the end of the 12 minute 'Black Majesty of the Vast Pantheon' you'll have had enough of the entire band, especially the ever-tiresome, tinny guitars and muffled drums.

That's your lot for now. I'll probably upload this to the Big Music Roundup at some later date.


Extar, over, out.

TCP/IP, it's fucking me off. Other protocols doing little more. Definitely got worse. Now making me curse. Removing IPX. Will it ever work? Never!