Review Summary: What we have here is a failure to evolve from the juvenile past efforts into something a little more refined. And it’s starting to show.
We’ve all had times where chaos got the better of us, whether it was losing our temper and breaking something or just doing something stupid for the sake of the action. Psyopus has made a career on chaos. A blend of putridly spiteful lyrics and a focus on dissonance have been the band’s staples since Ideas of Reference. The last two albums were fun, especially during the first few listens. But maybe I’ve matured or maybe it’s just getting old, but Psyopus are in dire need of growing up after listening to Odd Senses.
I may be missing the point. Maybe somehow they’re catering to an audience of violently angry people and that well’s not running dry, I have no idea. But I’m a happy, content person who happens to have a taste in tech/math metal, and the writing has some very glaring faults when compared to other technical efforts. And I know hate is nothing new when it comes to metal, but good lord, these fully grown men write like they’re still sour about some failed relationship in high school. Writing about despair and loss can be beautiful if written in a constructive manner, but from the begging blast of the short first track, I realized there is nothing mature about these lyrics. Take our first decently long song, “Medusa”. This is the first of many songs about the lyricist’s absolute hate of women. This track is about a girl who is very self absorbed and vain. That’s it. And of course the only way they knew how to stretch out this seemingly cliché hatred is to describe exactly how they wish to torture and murder the said type of woman, screaming “F*cking kill her! Stick that F*cking mirror through her face!” How exhilarating and original! Like I said, it was okay for a while, but now I find it so trivial. I barely even need to get into the other songs because it’s all the same spiteful ramblings. If you want to hear the majority of the lyrics, go have a chat with your friendly neighborhood sociopath. He’ll have pretty much the same things to say about the same topics covered.
But I’m sure 98% of you aren’t here because of interest in the lyrics. It’s the seemingly technical use of guitars and the speed of the drumming. Before I delve into that, I must say that the bassist actually doesn’t sound half bad, a very acceptable effort in writing and playing, and would hold its own against most other technical bass players. Now the guitars, that’s a different story. I suppose for what is written, the playing is spot on, but the problem here is the writing. It sounds neat, and captures this idea of chaos that Psyopus love so dearly, but being a guitar player of 7 years, and a serious composer of about 2, it’s the sort of writing that’s achieved by playing natural harmonics and attacking the tremolo with full force, once in a while throwing in a half step interval or two and an open string breakdown. Okay I admit, there’s slightly more in there, but not much. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the first 2 albums use of this concept, but I expected some sort of development after Our Puzzling Encounters Considered. It’s very grating listening to this whole album all the way through, honestly. There’s no real change from song to song save for a few weak little attempts (that chop job of voices in “boogeyman” really isn’t as cool as I’m thinking they thought it was.) The only slightly interesting change is “A Murder to Child”, which plays like Stravinsky for dummies, but it’s better than the rest because of the absence of the horrible lyrics. And the drumming is fast, that’s about it.
I really didn’t have much fun with this album at all. It’s a total step back for a band that was already only a decent listen. I suppose if you hate women as much as these gentlemen, and love natural harmonics, you’ll fall in love with this band and probably hate me too. If not, I suppose if you’re extremely curious, you should check out one of the other albums, because the production is rawer and that sort of lends itself more to their style. Either way, I wanted this album to be clever and creative, but I suppose I’ll need to look elsewhere. It was a great disappointment.
