REVIEW: Chimaira

Artist: Chimaira

Album: The Infection

Release Date: April 21st, 2009

Genre(s): Metalcore

Okay so this is the new album from the Cleveland rockers Chimaira, and let me just say that it bores me to death.

Think of everything you liked in their previous couple albums and throw that out the window, there is no speed, no complex drumming, nothing in this album. If you enjoy slow riffs with slow drums in your metalcore then by all means listen to this, if not then stay the hell away.

Just when you think it's going to get fast, it doesn't. It's just bullshit, I feel like I wasted my life listening to this shit, kill me now. But I might as well finish the damn review.

Here is my opinion of every song on this album:

1. The Venom Inside - Too bad the venom didn't work :(.

2. Frozen in Time - This album is frozen in time because I had to pause it.

3. Coming Alive - Coming alive are you? More like dying a slow death, RIP.

4. Secrets of the Dead - There are no more secrets, you bored them to the fucking afterlife.

5. The Disappearing Sun - It disappeared right up your giant assholes, christ.

6. Impending Doom - This review after all the hate it will receive from anal assholes.

7. On Broken Glass - OH LOOK! THE BEGINNING HAS SPE- oh nevermind people, back to slow again. Oh right, a pun...ummm...I feel like driving broken glass through my ears after listening to this song.

8. Destroy and Dominate - This album destroys my mind and dominates my asshole in very painful and bad ways.

9. Try to Survive - What you'll be doing while listening to this.

10. The Heart of it All - It had been given a heart attack due to massive amounts of faggotry.

Hope you people enjoyed the review : D. Now it's time to forget this album with some booze, peace.

Track to Check: None, they all sound the same

Score: 1.2/10

-Dainja

REVIEW: Job for a Cowboy

Artist: Job for a Cowboy

Album: Ruination

Release Date: July 7, 2009

Genre(s): Deathcore, death metal

Holy shit - that's a fucking BADASS album art. You're browsing the metal section in your local music retailer, looking for a new cd to bang your head to. After seeing that display of awesomeness, you're ready to drop your hard earned cash, take it home, and play the shit out of it. With artwork like that, you've got a death metal masterpiece in your hands for sure. Right?

...Right? Sadly, no. You couldn't have been more wrong. The moment Ruination enters the disc tray, starts spinning, and the speakers start lamentably vomiting out the first song, you realize you've made a grave mistake. And it's too late. The sadistic members of the band must be laughing now, knowing you're in for a sad forty minutes of suffering and pain. Not the good kind of pain, like the smash-you-in-the-face brutality of a Cannibal Corpse album. The pain that makes you want to stop living; the kind of pain that can come only from mistakenly purchasing a horrible album. You've just been introduced to Job for a Cowboy.

You can tell right away that the relationship between you two isn't going to work out, and you wish you'd never met. You want to like Job for a Cowboy; you may see the good in them deep down, their sweeeet death metal core, but it's hard to get past all of their glaring flaws. For starters, you can't communicate with each other properly. Why? Maybe because the voice gets on your nerves. The vocalist's growl is deep and sounds pretty good, but all of a sudden, he'll switch up his style (mid-verse, no less) without cause or warning, and do this high shriek that makes him sound like a complete ass. You wouldn't mind this one little issue if he did it less, but it keeps happening, and you don't know how to live with it.

As time goes on, you start neglecting Job for a Cowboy, spending less time with them. You feel bad, but it's just something you can't bring yourself to do. This band bores the hell out of you. Their riffs are generic far beyond interest. Once in a while it strikes up something that really interests you, but that cool part of that song is over before you know it, and it's back to that driving monotony you've gotten used to. You dread the premise of giving Ruinaton another go-around, knowing full well that it's going to drag on and on and on and on and on and on miserably. When you think one of these songs is going to end, your spirits lift at the prospect of getting to hear something different (if only slightly), and then come crashing down when the song continues. Never before have you wanted something to end so badly.

Relationships require a sense of rhythm from both participants, and the rhythm in Job for a Cowboy's latest album can only be described as erratic. You can only help but feel sorry for the drummer, witnessing that he has such talent yet no idea what to do with it. He overuses the cymbals in every song, including parts where it seems entirely inappropriate. The drum part changes at least 6 times per passage; there's no consistency whatsoever. It's hard for you to get into the songs when the drum parts sound like a bunch of randomly hit difficult patterns that the this guy played, clearly while attempting to show off, looped throughout the song, without even an effort to sync them with the other instruments. When you realize that the driving force behind everything doesn't even make sense to you, then you realize that it's time to break up.

And that's it - your relationship with Job for a Cowboy, which seemed so sincere at first, has come to a swift end. You can't say you hated everything about Ruination, though. There's a memorable solo here or there, and it's decidedly less deathcore-sounding than the band's previous work. You may be able to give them credit for that, but it's certainly not enough to make Ruination worth a listen. Any group with a couple good guitarists and a resilient drummer can get together, play something heavy, and call it death metal, but that doesn't mean it's going to be good. Coherent songwriting and expression are musts, and JFAC fails so miserably in that category, they're not even worth calling a band.

Ruination hasn't touched your cd player for weeks, and it's found a new home inside your recepticle bin, but the memories of the bad times you spent with it will haunt you forever.

Track to Check: God help you if you even think about listening to this album, but each song is as mindless and putrid as the other.
Score: 2.6/10

-Psychotic Pulse

Summer Slaughter Diary: The Death, The Brutality, The Glory

The story starts as I sit with my friends in a NYC pizzeria talking about which bands we're going to mosh for. Doors open to Summer Slaughter in an hour; Karina's holding our place in line, as we flag down a taxi to take us to Irving Plaza. We have half an hour to wait, far longer than it seemed, as we had a killer time talking bands with hundreds of kids sporting death metal t-shirts. I had never seen a death metal band live before, and I was very excited to make that a thing of the past.

I got inside and was unpleasantly informed that the lineup would be split over the 2 NYC dates, and only seven bands would go on that night. This sounded like bad news until I found out that all the shitty bands were going on the next day. Looks like I picked the right time to come! My only regret is that I came on the wrong day to see Born of Osiris (check out my review of their latest; I'm a huge fan), but all seven of the bands that performed for me that night owned me.

1. Blackguard was first up. Like most opening bands I've witnessed, they kicked way too much ass to be first. They played folk metal with an awesome pirate theme, to great acclamation. I love seeing a young band with serious chops, and apparently, so did everyone else, because the crowd ate up their performance. Everyone in the band banged their head in unison, while their vocalist (whose shriek greatly resembled Alexi Laiho's) delivered each line of the song with great power and feeling. Overall, this band's performance was a win; their 25 minute set was all too short.

2. Decrepit Birth had a lot to offer. They play straight up brutal death metal. No frills, all quality. Their music is simple, but very good, so I had high hopes for them. Sadly, they are a lot better studio, but I was happy to see them live, if only because I was a big fan of them already. I bought one of their awesome-looking shirts, and proudly displayed my love for the band by knocking out some people in the pit. I'm seeing Decrepit Birth again this November, and I'll be hoping for a performance on par with my high expectations for what these guys can do.

3. Origin WAS GODLY. Their latest album Antithesis is one of the greatest technical death achievements ever. The band played their best songs, and played them spot-on, no mistakes. The drum sound was spectacular, the driving force behind it all, and John Longstreth consistently proves himself to be one of the finest drummers out there. Some asshole in the crowd picked a fight with me, but I don't have the time for that bullshit, so I spat on him and walked away. How can you think about anything else when Origin is playing right in front of you? Everyone on the stage kicked a gratuitous amount of ass. I love Origin, end of story.

4. Darkest Hour... meh... good performance, I'm just not that into these guys. I respect them for being in the top quartile of metalcore and bringing in a lot of melodic elements, no doubt. They played a good set, while I sat in the lobby and hung out with my bros. It was about this time that I realized that I was going to be in major pain the next day. And there were still three more amazing bands to come.

5. Ensiferum had the craziest and fastest circle pits I've ever seen. Whoever says circle pits are lame clearly hasn't been in one that intense. Excellent song choices by the band, including "Deathbringer from the Sky", "One More Magic Potion", and "Iron". These guys rock with their chants and their keyboards. They all performed shirtless and with face paint, which is slightly odd, but Ensiferum puts on a cool presentation. They're coming back to North America for a headlining tour soon, and I highly recommend them to everyone.

6. Suffocation sounded awesome... when they were playing. I didn't enjoy hearing Frank Mullen go on a bunch of rants and make a dozen speeches and, at times, talk about nothing at all. Let's play a drinking game: every time Suffocation says they've been around 20 years, take a shot. You'll pass out by the end of their set. Having a Brooklyn accent and lacking the ability to stop talking must be prerequisites to joining Suffocation. I gotta give these guys credit though. When they got down to it, they demolished with a huge, heavy sound that threatened to wreck the venue. The pits weren't very good, which disappointed me. I guess people get tired from rocking out to six straight hours of death metal. Suffocation are legends though, and well worth seeing.

7. Necrophagist: the holy headliners. The sound system can make or break a live band, and sad to say, it broke Necropagist. The vocals and drums sounded superb, but the guitars were a drowned out. The crowd gave Necrophagist mad respect anyway, deservedly so. Necrophagist is one amazing band, and despite the relative poor sound quality, I loved them, especially as their sound improved as the set went on. They even snuck in a song from their upcoming album (set for release this year), and it was beyond awesome. They ended the night spectacularly.

I emerged from the venue reeking of smoke and sweat, out onto the night streets of New York City, along with a bunch of other satisfied metalheads. Per tradition, everyone chills in front of the venue for a while before making their way home. Summer Slaughter was a lot of fun. I regret missing it the first two years, but there's always next year to make up for it. The lineup is consistently killer year after year, so I'm almost positive that if you go to the Slaughter next year, you'll see me there. Here's my quick analysis of the bands, by the way:

Best to worst:

Origin

Ensiferum

Blackguard

Suffocation

Necrophagist

Decrepit Birth

Darkest Hour

This has been your Summer Slaughter review, which I hope you enjoyed almost as much as I enjoyed the concert. More album reviews coming this week, and Mayhem Festival two weeks from today!

-Psychotic Pulse

Summer Slaughter Diary: Introduction

Midnight has just passed, and Summer Slaughter will be arriving at a town near me in less than 18 hours. It's the third iteration of the annual festival, but the first chance I've gotten to go myself. My excitement is peaking, and... you know what, that sounded wrong. This is starting to sound like a fanfiction. Ok, so what makes Summer Slaughter so damn awesome?

If there's one thing I have to praise it for, it's that the lineup is no less fantastic each year. This time around, the headliners are Necrophagist, the German band who singlehandedly gave birth to the technical death metal subgenre as we know it today, and Suffocation, one of the oldest and most respected bands of the original American death metal movement. Without a doubt, Summer Slaughter should be at the top of the list for death metal fans this year. The rest of the bands are icing, but don't make the mistake of writing them all off, because there are some standouts that should give hard-hitting performances.

Support comes from Ensiferum, Finnish viking/folk metal masters; Darkest Hour, a long-running American melo-death act; Winds of Plague, a deathcore band with a female keyboardist; Dying Fetus, a death metal band unique for expressing a strong political agenda; Born of Osiris, a new band that blends tech-death and metalcore with beautiful atmosphere; Origin, a highly acclaimed tech-death band who have scored a breakout hit with their new album; After the Burial, a metalcore band with progressive elements; and Blackguard, a recently-signed pirate metal group who won their slot on this prestigious tour in a battle of the bands. Wow, this night's going to kill me, in the best way possible.

With a total of ten bands vying for my attention (HOLY SHIT), I'm a little worried whether spending a large number of hours in a cramped venue will make Summer Slaughter a detriment to the claustrophobic. It's an experience, though, one I'd like to see firsthand. The idea of holding an outdoor style festival in an indoor setting doesn't appeal to me, but awesome metal bands do, so nothing can hold back my ecstacy; seeing several of my favorite bands in one place is the kind of thing metalheads live for. How will it all turn out? We can only wait and see. Check back tomorrow, and I'll let you know if the Slaughter is as awesome as it seems, or an event too good to be true.

-PsychoticPulse