Review Summary: Techdeath for Westboro Baptist followers: Racist? Check. Homophobic? Check. Anti-Islamic? Check. The worst musicianship and bedroom production fathomable? Check.
I woke up this morning not realizing I was about to discover one of the worst full-lengthed albums to ever grace my ears. Had I known my ears were hours away from being permanently defiled, I perhaps would've never woken up. Tougher Than Nails are a "Christian" "technical death metal" two-piece project from Canandaigua, New York, a small town of 10,000 citizens. "Christian" and "technical death metal" are in quotations because Tougher Than Nails seem not to quite grasp what those two concepts mean. The band is less technical death metal and more like Design The Skyline thrown into a blender with random midi drum tracks and incel screaming, all while the blender is still running. Tougher Than Nails spread the gospel by ways of bigotry, homophobia, and especially a hatred towards Planned Parenthood and Middle Easterns, all in the name of Jesus Christ, of course. And nothing screams 'loveth thy neighbor' by having an album cover with a literal white knight crusader beating down and slaughtering hordes of LGBT and leftist. Seriously, look closer at that cover artwork. But hey, it's okay for Dead Flesh (vocals, guitars, bass) and 'Robert' (drums), because being a prideful bigot is totally acceptable if you're doing so for our father and savior.
The album opens up with a tediously long and abhorrently voiced-acted skit, where a man is put on trial for being a proud racist, an open anti-LGBT opposer, and for not accepting Allah as his lord in savior. As the crowd berates the man on trial with insults like "bigot" and "pig", the man finally responds by proclaiming he is "only speaking the truth, and the word of Christ", "a wolf amongst the sheep", and that he "will gladly die for God's word." This should be a good indicator of the themes discussed in the album's lyrics. After over two minutes of nasally incel voice acting, laughable royalty-free crowd sound effects, and the same shouts repeated over and over again, the actual song proceeds to bend you over and rape you with the worst production one could ever ask for. The obvious drum machine turns into a sludgy mess of maxed-out clipping and the gutturals only spike the speakers even more.
And this is where we come to the problem that truly plagues the whole album; the production. Sure, the musicianship puts the god in god-awful, but the production is so loud, so muddled, and so incomprehensible, that it puts most bedroom black metal to shame. Even the guy from Myrimin would be laughing at this. The volume was mixed and mastered so loudly, all the instruments clip and spike into an indecipherable fart cloud of blast beats and bass-devastating diarhettic convulsions. I seriously do not recommend wearing headphones for this album, as it will undoubtedly cause tinnitus. 'Delusion Blasphemies Destroyed' sounds less like a techdeath album and more like some dude doing gutturals over the sounds of a tornado demolishing a Taco Bell. The album becomes unlistenable after about 20 seconds due to how horrendous it sounds, so imagine how the full album would sound.
The few times we actually can decipher the "riffs", if you want to call them that...well, we can't. These songs lack any and all noticeable structure and sound like random wankfests with no meaning or cohesion. Guitars wail out of key and riffs constantly stutter and stop with no rhyme or reason. The title track, for example, opens with a riff that sounds like it was played on an untuned guitar, and the track "Tougher Than Nails" opens with what sounds like cats being strangled with bass strings. Perhaps this is why we cannot decipher the music; Dead Flesh knew he was a terrible musician and had to bury literally everything in the mix. "Let's Bleed The Freaks" could be an Alice In Chains reference, but you'd think maybe Dead Flesh would know how to write better music if he had listened to Alice In Chains. Anywhoo, this song is literally four minutes of random MIDI guitar noises that sound edited in a last-rate free-to-use movie-making software. Really though, this is what the entirety of 'Delusional Blasphemies Destroyed' sounds like, so picking individual moments is futile.
However, we could put all of that aside if the album weren't created the intent to divide, hate, and spread fear. Unfortunately, the album's production and songs are not its downfall, nor are they what the band will be remembered for. Instead, the entire album is written with themes of killing gays and Muslims in the name of Jesus. Dead Flesh is clearly the kind of white incel who sits around blaming minorities for his problems, and probably women too, as there's no way a guy with a girlfriend would devote so much time to creating a 9-song technical death metal LP specifically about being a bigot for Christ. While many of the album's lyrics are mostly just Bible verses and generic "God is good" crap, there is brief but clear-as-day lyricism against minorities, homosexuals, and Planned Parenthood. Though, to be honest, most of the "God is good" stuff is actually more about doing vague unspecific killings for God, as if Dead Flesh is prepared to go to war with a sword in one hand and a bible in the other. Dead Flesh particularly dumps his insecurities into the track:
"You shall be canceled and scorned for nonconformity/
So don your pink hat and bow to the alter of Planned Parenthood/
Kickbacks to politicians keep it legal so unborn children of those
races deemed inferior by Christ can be feed to the Machine
Here we come to slay/
We are in the way/
Only those in the Body of Christ have the courage to rise up
and stand in the way/"
You may be wondering if this all a joke. Perhaps this is some way to get 'libby snowflakes' riled up, or perhaps it's more in the vein of Anal Cunt, Nein/11, or Zombie Testicals, where the lyrics are incredibly offensive but they're obviously not meant to be taken seriously, and were clearly written by people who don't actually believe those things. I can't say the same for Tougher Than Nails. Nothing here indicates tongue-in-cheek or any humor. From the band name, which could pass off as any other metal band, to the album art, which looks like it was probably professionally done, I'm very much so convinced that Dead Flesh was trying to create a work of art. Dead Flesh is actually trying to push a message he believes is correct, and any critics of said message are purposely going against him and the holy scripture. Because of that, *** you, Tougher Than Nails.
Even if these lyrics were about generic metal topics or whatever, this cacophony of anal ruptures and midi blast beats would still be worthy of a hard 1.5/5 rating. Add lyrics about righteous racism, and there you go, a 1/5. Really, Tougher Than Nails are so bad that it makes me want to reevaluate everything else with a one-star rating. Perhaps Pyschosexual, Theory Of A Deadman, Soulja Boy, Hinder, MattyB Raps, and even Myrimin are all worthy of at least a 1.5/5 rating now. It's a shame that Dead Flesh is using a pseudonym because I seriously fear that this kid will end up bringing a gun to a gay pride rally one day. After all, the Oklahoma City bombers did so in the name of Christ, so it's not out of the question. So, at the end of the day, jam some good technical death metal like Necrophagist, or some good Christian metal like Eternal Decision or Tourniquet, all of which has comprehensible production, talent musicianship, and lyrics about...well, anything besides being a loathsome virgin incel piece of ***.
