I wasn't really paying attention to the copyright date when I bought this, so based solely on the simplistic CG art, I kinda just assumed this was from the early '00s. I was a little shocked it was from 2015, because the cover would have already looked pretty dated in the '90s. The feel of the cheap-looking CGI art reminds me a little bit of the cover of the Corum CD I posted about ages ago, although the jail bars make me think of the 2nd Zoetrope album.
While the budget cover with non-logo and politically-charged band name would normally scream groove metal, I was actually quite optimistic about this disc. When I looked it up, I saw that the guitar was Damon Bernklau of Seventh Omen, who were a terribly underrated heavy/power metal band I liked quite a bit.
I have mixed feelings about the CD depending on the song. For an old school metal devotee like me, the overall sound feels way too modern for me, and some of the tracks get pretty groove metal-ly or do too much playing around with vocal effects. They're obviously not trying to be an consciously old school band in any respect, from production to aesthetics. But at the same time, a lot of the individual riffs and solos don't feel very modern at all (the guitarwork is, as expected, very proficient) and there's a pleasing thrashiness to several of the songs, particularly "American Christ" and the title track. This comparison might be a bit of a stretch that is overly biased by the politically charged lyrics here, but a couple of riffs feel they should have been used in The System has Failed/United Abominations-era Megadeth. Even the ballad "Stay the Course" has a solid melody once it gets going, although it feels terribly out of place among the other songs.
The vocals are a gruff, mildly hoarse style which I disliked at first, though you get used to them. Even without being overly HC or aggro-sounding, admittedly they're not particularly good vocals, although they work pretty well on "White House Burning."
In the context of a bargain bin find, I think there's certainly enough decent material here to justify spending a buck or two. But I would have been quite disappointed and/or livid to have paid normal used CD price or even worse, full retail for this disc.
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