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"Mistah Kurtz… He Dead!" Brutal Deluxe |
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How low can you go? No, no, no… we're not speaking of distasteful content here… although it's not beyond the realm of possibility as all we're given are brief bits and chunks of the thirteen tunes in lyrical form. "Brutal" is the operative term here… "Barefoot and barbaric and… Brutal?" More like it. The UK negativists conjure up a bass heavy underground sound built upon early Sabbath, classic Cooper, Dorrian's Doom and Nu-Metal grooves for a down tuned, downtime that's a listen or two away from lethal. Dark and dreadful, "Mistah Kurtz" pulls from the contemptible B-movie outlet "Heart Of Darkness" and employs over and again the art of self-destruction through cynicism and dense riffing that's equal parts moody, muddy, Manson, and masochistic. Sequentially, the pace flows like a river of dread, conjuring, reconjuring, and occasionally ebbing in a dead zone of redundancy. There are several recurrent moments that reveal the promise of more than another one-way modern rock subculture Korn, P.O.D. wannabe freak show with a twisted fate-"Crime And Punishment" sets a blistering pace with buried vocs and the unlikeliest of shred; "Psycho Industrial Da Da's" a cool and catchy follow up that gives way to the album's best track, the compulsive "S.M.N." The pulse shallows from here-"Mother Morphine," "Slagfreak," "Life Sentence"-sure nuff the guitars crunch, the groove grinds and "Brutal Deluxe" is brutality defined; it's where a nothing tune like "Symbiosis" leads into the almost anthemic "The Book That Changed My Life" or the lethargic "Aardman" and "Flycatcher" leading the inspired "Discipline" System of a Down-sized closer that you realize the band's solid on one level, lacking on another, and overall still feeling their way through. Released by Dream Catcher Records Review by Vinnie Apicella [va85@columbia.edu] P.O. Box 20252
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