Violent Marv
Synesthesia
4.3
It's ironic that Synesthesia includes a quote from a Marv Albert themed Dennis Leary Rant "Turn the Stone"); "Marv, Marv, Marv, Marv.....this is God. What were you thinking?". Because it could easily be turned into "Violent Marv, Violent Marv, Violent Marv, Violent Marv. This is MetalReview.com. What where you thinking?" As this Canadian, Frank Miller (Sin City) character named group seems intent to half heartedly rip off every 'core' themed album of the last 4 years.
Attempted technical discordance a la Dillinger? Check. A few death metal growls, grindcore screams and lumbering breakdowns like The Red Chord? You bet. Some squirly spazzed-out bursts of off kilter noise like The Number 12 Looks Like You? Absolutely. The end result? A contrived and annoying mish mash of noise that rivals the recent Look What I Did effort, Minutemen for the Moment as far as pointless and randomly strewn together popular metal elements as an excuse for an album.
Further beleaguered by a subpar production, Synesthesia stands for everything that makes most metal heads despise modern metal. As if its paint on the wall, intentional chaos isn't bad enough, Violent Marv try to slyly throw in some random rock elements to give their mindless spurts some form of cool Hot Topic/MTV2 allure ("See Spot Die") or a thrash burlyness to appeal to the metal heads ("Brick by Brick"). Otherwise the tracks zig and zag like the bands mentioned in the second paragraph with misguided spasms of over confident creativity (i.e "Colliding Circles", "Palm Pilot Suicide Note", "Turn the Stone") and as you can see, the song titles and themes are just as vacuous. Oh and don't forget the craaaaaaazy joke song/hidden track combo ("Martha") to end the album, how original.
Violent Marv has successfully made an album that annoys me, and almost has me turning back on a style of music I vehemently enjoy and defend. And this isn't some sort of forced chaoscore/metalcore backlash to be trendy at Violent Marv's expense, I still enjoy most of it but with this, Neshemah, Life In Pictures, Look What I Did and Achilles recently plaguing my review stack, at some point it has to stop, really kids, just stop now. Please.
