Psychobolia
Fisting You All
5.7
Psychobolia’s Fisting You All is a brutal death metal blitzkrieg. With thirteen songs averaging two minutes in length, Fisting You All pummels the wax out of your ears with grindcore like ferocity and efficiency. However brutal death metal is a crowded genre, teeming with hordes of human drum machines, guitarists with ADHD and microphone cupping grunters, and unfortunately, Psychobolia do little to distinguish themselves from the field.
After the obligatory calm before the storm intro, Fisting You All kicks into gear with “Androgynous”, a maelstrom of tremolo picking, dueling high and low pitch growls and the incessant pitter-patter of double bass. The song breaks down nicely towards the end with a stuttering call and response between the bass and guitars. Sadly, the aforementioned breakdown is the only memorable part of the album and it only lasts about fifteen seconds. Seriously, I have listened to this album at least half a dozen times and each time at least half an hour elapses before I realize it’s over. Fisting You All is Teflon coated, nothing sticks.
Psychobolia is not a bad band at all, the speed at which they play pretty much demands musical competency, but even in this area they are merely average for the genre. They fail to match the over the top intensity of bands like Origin or Hate Eternal, while sharing said bands’ deficiency when it comes to crafting memorable songs. They are like Nile without the Egyptian gimmick: forty riffs per song, only three you can remember. The only thing that really sets Psychobolia apart from the crowd is that they have a female vocalist, but if the band had anything musically notable to write about, I probably would not have bothered bringing that up. The title Fisting You All does bring to mind a porn video I saw once featuring Bridgette Kerkove and Kylie Ireland. You see the girls are lying on their sides on the bed in kind of a 69 position, but facing away from each other, and they each take their fist and… Sorry, I’m getting off track; this record does that to me.
Fisting You All is a serviceable brutal death metal album, well performed and decently produced. However, if brutality is really what you are looking for, there are other bands that do it harder, faster and write more memorable songs, probably not all in the same package, but in any case, you could get more bang for your buck elsewhere.
