12 Ton Sledge
Nothing To Gain
5.7
12 Pound Sledge, even with the bonus of a great name, is not really doing anything special here, but they are doing what they are doing very well. It's mosh heavy hardcore with metal production and musicianship. It begs the question: don't you own fifteen of these discs already? Can you really tell one from the other anymore? It's not a question of recording quality or performance anymore. It's just that this style is a bit limited in what it allows bands to do, and even the best are going to be stepping on each other's feet after a while. But all I can do is tell you about this one.
With paces that range from jumpy pit monsters to trudging breakdown laden chuggers, the band is square in the middle of expectation for this style. The songs all kind of slide into one another, despite being from different recording sessions... I assume. When I try to get on their website to find some info I get fuck-all. What I know for sure is that the production has definite quality differences as you move from song grouping to song grouping, so that this is either a comp or they just couldn't afford to get several stints in different studios mastered correctly.
All of which is kind of neither here nor there. How do the various songs recordings sound? Nice, but far from extraordinary. Extra ordinary, more like. This is a great "local" act - the kind you really HAVE to see on a Saturday night at your local dank cellar scenehole, once again, that when compared to the saturated market for mosh just becomes another breakdown laden, death metal textured hardcore act. The singer gets a roar going and that's about that. The guitars find the root note and stray from it only long enough to explore a secondary root note an d the occasional lick. All the excitement comes from the rhythm section, as per usual. But with the fantastic efforts of bands like All Shall Perish and Lamb of God as the new standard a band like this barely rises above tedium.
The bottom line is unfortunate, but accurate. This band is simply another one of these bands. If they were from SLC and I could check them out during a night of carousing, I would make sure to be at their gig, but as a recording act in a fucking universe of mosh bands like stars in the sky, I just can't see why you would care. If this is a retrospective of some kind and I am missing some fundamental contribution to the scene these guys have made, I apologize - I can only do what I can do. But frankly, I can't imagine their contribution is in any way as important as the real godfathers of mosh. Be that as it may. If you just live for slower, funky death metal style hardcore, this is a fine band, but we both know you already own ten cds just like this.
