Review of Down The Drain - Dying Inside

Synopsis:

Did any of you guys ever heard the respectable debut from Lupara, featuring death metal veteran Jeremy Wagner from Broken Hope? Well, Buffalo NY’s, Down The Drain has sort of the same vibe going on--essentially a hardcore/metal band that’s using the lure of vocalist Brett Hoffman of Malevolent Creation fame to ‘death’ up their bland form of chunky, belligerent metallic hardcore.

Review:

Truthfully, this is just one of those albums I wished I had never signed up for. Whereas Lupara had Wagner as the main songwriter, resulting in some really heavy moments, Hoffman is merely vocal window dressing on some vaguely aggressive, mid tempo, thrashy, second rate hardcore. Yeah, there’s blast beats (“That Which Will Not Die”, “Darker Then”), there’s growls, there grooves (“Void Revisited” and almost every other track), and even some strains of pseudo scrawling death metal (“Deceived”) and a bass solo (“Watch me Die”) but it’s all so superficially heavy and unconvincing you wonder if back in 2005 when he joined this band, Hoffman needed the pay some debts or owed somebody a favor.

On the positive side, the production is okay, even though musically you get the feeling that the middle of any track, things could just go to shit at any minute, like a fucked rehearsal track. Lyrically, Hoffman is as mindless and lifeless as the music, as he appears to have used all his talent up for Malevolent Creation’s upcoming Doomsday X (itself a rather average release). Still if folks actually buy into the name dropping press info and myspace quotes, and buy this album for his presence alone, they will be sorely disappointed.

There’s a reason this was released on Arctic Music Group, a label co-run by Phil Fasciana, that has released several Malevolent Creation live albums and compilations, as well as Malevolent Creation projects like Hateplow--no other label would touch this mindless drivel. So Phil, being a long time friend, let Hoffman and his trend hopping project on board. How sad.

Release Details

Down The Drain

Dying Inside

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