Lazarus Complex
Soundtrack To My Demise
5.1
Though unsigned demo albums aren't usually particularly appealing from a reviewer’s perspective, something about Soundtrack To My Demise caught my eye. Though I’d never heard of Lazarus Complex, the photonegative cover art and goofy horror film logos were a weird enough pair to incite my curiosity. Upon further inspection I learned that Lazarus Complex is actually a dude named Jerry Wilde from Indiana and that this is his second self-released disc in as many years. Though Soundtrack to My Demise doesn’t really live up to my initial curiosity, it doesn’t entirely disappoint either; this is an interesting but deeply flawed album that’s very characteristic of both the strengths and limitations of one-man metal acts.
Mr. Wilde’s genre of choice in this case is a slightly gothy take on doom metal; the tracks are primarily 4-minute mid-tempo gloom boppers that are built on basic rhythmic foundations and rely heavily on Wilde’s guitar work and distant moans. The real interesting twist comes in the guitars, as where most doom acts rely on massively downtuned, weighty guitars, Soundtrack to My Demise features a grainy, biting, almost black metal guitar attack. Though Wilde frequently uses the guitar lines to provide melodic context for his vocal hooks, he sounds at his best when the guitars deliver more caustic power chord marches, like on “Sinking,” “Welcome the Darkness,” and the especially grim sounding “Bed of Bones.” Unfortunately, the odd acidic blackened riff is about all this disc has to offer when it comes to diversity, as Wilde runs headfirst into one of the issues most common to one-man projects: Soundtrack to My Demise features almost no song-to-song dynamic. This disc is purportedly a concept album, and considering its thematic unity (read: homogeneity) I believe it. Virtually every track here is a simple, static exercise in fuzzy melancholia, and after a few roll by they start to sound awful samey. Further, though Mr. Wilde manages to keep his music nice and rhythmically tight, his lack of real proficiency at any instrument other than guitar makes for some exceedingly dull rhythm tracks.
I kinda dug this when I first got it, and I can still see digging it if I hear it in the right mood, but in the end Lazarus Complex wear out their(his) welcome by about three or four tracks in on this one. This fella’s got some cool ideas, but he’d do well to bring in a few extra musicians to switch up the songcraft and add some flair to the performance here and there.
