Review of Project: Failing Flesh - A Beautiful Sickness (Demo)

Recent Karmageddon signees Project: Failing Flesh assail us with their full length demo album, that while certainly better produced, delivered and played what pretty much every demo we get plays; and begs the question why would Karmageddon feel the need to sign them? My guess A) is because former Voivod and E-Force singer Eric Forrest is the vocalist, and B) Sci-Fi metal is suddenly popular as former death metal (Centinex) and black metal (Mork Gryning) acts have made the industrial switch. Still, the music on A Beautiful Sickness, while competent, isn’t really that exciting. Again, maybe I’m just overloaded on the cyber metal genre.

A slightly less death metal Fear Factory might be a decent comparison, with robotic, mechanical riffs, lots of electronic sampling and a mix of gruff throaty shouts and cleaner crooning. There’s some solid precise percussion that carries the cybernetic atmosphere and the guitars have a metallic crunch purveying some adequate riffs, but I never felt too enamored with what comes across as entirely contrived.

When stepping out of their hydrollic powered robotic guise and trying something a little more boundary breaking like the monumental and discordant strings that litter “9mm Movie”, things are a little more interesting, but when simply belting out electronica laced(basically, buzzing, whirring and beeping), recycled Fear Factory riffs like “Scene of The Crime”, “Entrance Wound” and “Taste of the Lie”, it simply makes the album averagely entertaining in a genre with far more dynamic choices.

The self made production is impressive though, with a suitably motorized sounding delivery that gives the often stagnant riffs brief, pulsing life, but other than the aforementioned “9mm Movie”, and a few bars of “Highwire Act”, nothing really kept my interest that long. Throw in a strange choice of covers in Venom’s “Warhead” (why didn’t they just cover “Demanufacture” or “Edgecrusher” and be done with it?

Karmageddon probably wont have to do anything with this demo before they release it as their debut album, and that's a credit to the professionalism and production already in place, but song wise they could use a influx on new ideas.

Release Details

Project: Failing Flesh

A Beautiful Sickness (Demo)

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