Kill2This
Mass (Down) Sin (Drone)
6.1
In the promo sheet for this album it says, and quite enthusiastically I might add, that this is "The album Machine Head should've made after The More Things Change.." Well, I think Burn my Eyes is a timeless classic and even though a lot of people don't like The More Things Change, I happen to love it. After listening through several times now, I guess that statement is close to accurate. However, the aggression doesn't quite match classic Machine Head, and then we've got vocals. Imagine Robb Flynn's most lackluster moments during his attempts to "sing" & you've got the vox for Kill 2 This. I'm having an extremely hard time accepting these vocals. Mostly because they just sound really unstable and seem awfully forced in a "soft" kind of way. The music does have a "euro" feel to it & does resemble Machine Head I'd say about 75% of the time. NOT Machine Head's heavier moments though. Songs have the basic cut & dry patterns of verse chorus verse, and there was hardly anything in the 1st half of the disc to capture my attention. However, when song #6 "Winter Green" rolls around, I'll admit it's got a very different oriental type main riff and is werthy of attention. A crawl-pace song, it grows at the rate of drying paint, but it does get quite heavy. But 10 minutes of this song is just too long and repetitive as it adds virtually nothing new as it goes on. Then it's "Suburbanality (How to Hang Yourself From an Urban Structure)". Now this is much better material because vox finally change to the heavier side and the puzzle pieces aren't pounded together as w/ the cleaner singing vocals. At 2:30 a very heavy riff presents itself, and at 3:00 a double bass "blast" supports the fury and then it's safe to say that it sounds like classic MH. Then it's back to "Spineglass" and the clean vox just make me cringe. Riffing is ok, nothing spectacular by any means but a tad bit over the status of simplicity to call it nu-metal. What the hell is this "Telephone call to god"? A 58 second filler of operator recordings over a hilarious techno beat, and of course, it's apparently got enough substance for the band to give it the title of a complete "song" on the album. To all bands who employ this bullshit: Don't come up w/ some ridiculous half-assed sample or teckno snip-it and title it as a whole song on your album. It's basically telling the buyer "Hey look, we've got 10 full-length songs on the album" when the disk is glanced upon, but then the consumer finds he/she was taken for a chump when they find those dumb clips of werthless noise that are never werth another listen. QUIT THAT SHIT!!! Now that I'm done w/ my soapbox, let's finish the review. "Confused in the Computer Age" is basically nothing to write home about until 2:30, when there's a very clever (well, compared to the rest of the album) heavy riff w/ 2 screeching harmonix at the end of the measure and almost gives it a touch of technicality. Ok well now it's time to get back to bitching about krap noise again. "Typhoid & Swans" actually shows great potential as an emotional instrumental, only to fade out 3 or 4 minutes through. Well my cd player says that it's nearly an 8 minute song. So it's complete silence for awhile, and once again, Kill2This must think their listeners are total blockheads and make them wait for a supposed "morsel" or something worthwhile at the end, only to find overly loud blaring static noize come in w/ barely decipherable meaningless"spoken word". I know if I were in a band and laid this kind of shit to cd and expected fans to be happy about it I would also expect a thorough beating from people w/ common sense. This noise is NOT art of any kind, regardless of what people say. It's filler crap that looks good on paper but disappoints the people who make or break your careers in the end.
Kill2This employs basic heavy metal formulas w/ some atmospheric keys as well. If you can bear these vox then this album may find its way into your collection. Like I said, Machine Head comparisons are plentiful but nothing on this disk surpasses early MH. If you're a guttural death goon this is nowhere near your style but if you're used to nu-metal this could quite possibly be a small step up.
