Arsis
A Diamond for Disease

Release Date: 2005 | Tracklist

To put it bluntly, Arsis is a boring band. I’ve only heard one song of theirs that interested me (the title track from this here EP), and every other song bored me to tears. To be fair, I haven’t heard their debut album A Celebration of Guilt (I’ll get around to it), which, for all I know, could be amazing. For now though, I can only base my opinion off of what I’ve heard (United in Regret first and A Diamond for Disease second), and my opinion is that Arsis is a boring band. Many claim that they’re the only American death metal band to be doing anything interesting, yet I found just the opposite on United in Regret. Every song ran together, spiced up a bit here and there with wanky solos. I thought, if they could simply write an interesting song, they would probably be one of the best bands the genre has to offer. They had copious amounts of instrumental talent and James Malone's vocals were pretty good. The thing they lacked (and this is a very big thing) was songwriting. So when I heard the EP A Diamond for Disease, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that there was indeed a very interesting and quite amazing song on here. However, this excitement was followed by typical Arsis disappointment when I heard the other two songs.

The EP’s title track “A Diamond for Disease” is amazing. There’s simply no other way to put it. It’s thirteen minutes of ass-kicking metal and it never once gets boring. Full of interesting riffs, solos, and a catchy-as-fuck chorus that never gets old, “A Diamond for Disease” showcases what Arsis is really capable of. Every instrument is played to perfection, and James Malone’s vocals are fantastic. I can’t say enough about the track. It’s easily one of my favorite songs ever, so you can imagine my disappointment when I found that the other two songs on the EP didn’t even stand a chance of living up to the title track. “Roses on White Lace” is an Alice Cooper cover, and while I wish I could say that Arsis managed to make an Alice Cooper song interesting, it ends up being just as boring as the songs on United in Regret. “The Promise of Never” fares slightly better. It never really has the chance to become boring, as it doesn’t even reach the three minute mark, but it still isn’t very interesting. There’s nothing really inherently bad about the two tracks, but when I hear them, they merely become background music. “A Diamond for Disease” captures my full attention, never loosening the chokehold until the final notes ring out, yet the other two songs put me to sleep. It seems as if Arsis spent weeks writing and perfecting the title track and then maybe put about an hour each into the other two tracks. It’s frustrating because Arsis is very plainly capable of being so much better, yet they continually show off how good they are at wasting their talents.

After hearing United in Regret, I thought that I would never hear an interesting Arsis song. A Diamond for Disease changed that, but it also reinforced the fact that Arsis are consistently lazy songwriters. If they put as much effort into every song as they put into the title track, then they would be a force to be reckoned with. Let’s hope that they do that on their next album. This is me holding my breath.

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4 excellent

Rank: #149 for 2005