This album starts off with “to meet again,” I never met them the first time. Here is obscure metal from Mexico, care of Moribund, with a nicely detailed album cover that screams bash and bellow war metal. In that sense I am not disappointed. These guys can bash with the best of them, but the bellowing is sub-standard, even at the black metal school entry level. I’m not sold on the band mostly because of the production. I don’t think it is intentionally bad, but it suffers from being overly flat, no energy, no real drive from the guitars and vocals are too low. If this was intentional, my apologies to the sound engineer, but it does the band no favors. The one thing this style of music needs more than anything else is power, in your face, bash your head in with a telephone pole, subtlety delivered with power and aggression. The power is missing and I don’t think the band should be held accountable.
Musically this is derivative, 100% unoriginal, paint by numbers, generic, all of which bothers me not one iota, so here is my plan, instead of spending 15 bucks buying this disc, send the money straight to the band as a gift. Think of it like putting all of your money toward programming instead of getting the free mug with membership.
It’s not like the extreme metal market is over-saturated with mediocre copy cat bands or anything, I don’t see albums flying off the Mallwort shelves like cabbage patch dolls, and unoriginality never offended me anyway.
I hear some good ideas swarming around in the mush, cool riffs poorly placed. Discord for the sake of discord can get you far in war metal, but getting all your riffs in a row can do wonders.
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Welcome back Grim
on Dec 20th, 2010 at 10:51wow I really have to disagree with this review Grim. I thought Antimo really put a distinctive stamp on these songs with his guitar playing. All of those clean jangly melodies floating over top of the down-in-the-trenches blasting struck me as a unique way to approach this sound. The production is a little dull sure but nothing approaching the album ruining levels of say the last Angelcorpse album. This isn’t album of the year material but completely unoriginal and generic? I just don’t see it.
on Dec 20th, 2010 at 14:51I have to agree with Vugelnox. I really like this album and to be honest, it doesn’t sound like you spent more than five minutes listening to the album or writing the review. It’s true they’re not the most original, but I think this album has a sound that is distinctly Mexican, in the vein of the Chasm, and the guitarist has a real ear for dissonance. He isn’t just bending a few notes to sound diminished and evil. I really advise you to take a few more listens and think before you throw down 300 words of dismissive drivel. I expect better than that from Teeth of the Divine.
on Dec 20th, 2010 at 15:02I would also beg to differ with Grimfluffer. There is some pretty cool guitar playing going on with this record. This didn’t really get the attention it deserved in my opinion, even if it isn’t the “album of the year”. Seems like the reviewer passed judgement on this without really giving it a thorough listen.
on Dec 20th, 2010 at 18:47everything this band puts out is top quality brutality.def not for everyone though.what i want is another ravager lp.
on Dec 20th, 2010 at 20:03you all seem to have missed my key points, they can hold their own with the best of them, production quality sucks but don’t hold the band accountable, and good ideas just need to be brought out through better production. And unoriginal and derivative do not equate to untalented. My gripe is not that they can’t play, but that we can’t hear them play as we should. I thought I was obvious in slamming production values and not musical ideas. I’ll state it this way: musicality 75, production 25
on Dec 20th, 2010 at 22:26I think the album was produced fine it’s just the mixing is poorly done. The drums sound soft and the sound engineer could have done much better mixing this album proper.
on Dec 21st, 2010 at 19:28I agree with Grim: the production lacks the blasting in-your-face power the music deserves. They really need an engineer that knows what he’s doing, but in spite of that I think this is a very enjoyable album.
on Dec 21st, 2010 at 23:31