Okay thrash, but the vocals really drag this down. The main vocals are a sort of clean, rhythmic talking with through-a-megaphone type distortion added. I cannot think of a single metal band offhand that has ever used anything like this as primary vocals, and stylistically the closest thing that comes to mind are less aggressive Rage Against the Machine vocals. Barf. If that wasn't enough, the singer does the whole schizophrenic bit and will quickly alternate the aforementioned vocals with screechy ones. They fit the music a tad better, but largely come off as being too forced. Occasionally when doing them, the singer will inadvertently slip into sounding a bit like Gary's high vox from Blood Feast or Blaine from The Accüsed, but it never lasts for more than a line or two. Growly death metal vocals--which ironically end up being the most natural sounding vox on the album--are also used in a few spots, and these work better than the other vocal styles.
Musically, there's nothing particularly old school here, but most of the negative elements of post-'80s thrash are avoided. This makes the strange vocal styles even more bewildering, as one would expect to find them in an overly modern band. Acoustic guitars are used sparingly for intros and in the final instrumental track, and on rare occasion (usually to accompany the aforementioned growling vocals) the band will briefly hit death metal velocity (such as the beginning of "Reality Decays").

No comments:
Post a Comment