Review Summary: Yes, ‘Shrezzers’ is a portmanteau of ‘shredding’ and ‘Brazzers’. Read the review only if you’re desperate for more reasons to dismiss this album.
Technical proficiency is not the only metric by which to measure an album’s quality, but if it were then international progressive metal band Shrezzers would be a premier group. The skill of the members, particularly guitarists Vyacheslav "ChocoSlayc" Kavlenas and Vitalii Molokanov and saxophonist Artem Subichev, jumps out to the listener from the moment
SEX & SAX begins. Likewise, it is equally apparent that the talent of Shrezzers is being wasted entirely on a gimmick crafted for middle schoolers. Nowhere on
SEX & SAX is there a mature choice, a subtle idea, or even a second thought. Every moment serves only the most obsequious, pristine, in your face, bloviating and obvious progressive metal cliches, all wrapped in protective plastic (production) like an unused condom. Ironic for a band whose collective experiences with sexual contact are clearly limited to cranking pole in the workplace bathroom.
One would hope that the insipid optimism of each successive clean chorus would be the low point of
SEX & SAX, or the silly stop-start chugging heavy bits trying way too hard to intimidate, but the progressive metal is not actually the worst part of this awful progressive metal album. Instead, it is the band’s complete inability to navigate genre distinctions with tact or taste that sets
SEX & SAX apart. The ending of “Mastophobia” was perhaps the worst thing I thought I had ever heard, with its final chugging breakdown pierced by a ridiculous saxophone solo, but then “PVRNHVB” began and I instinctively attempted to stab my ears with a pair of scissors. It’s a trap song based around the Pornhub them, and it’s comfortably the worst thing I have ever heard. If you dared wonder, yes, there is a saxophone solo over the Pornhub trap beat.
On that note, what about the saxophone? Fowl, did you know there is a saxophone on this record? Shouldn’t you give the band some props for their use of SAXOPHONE?? No. I will not give this band sh
it for their use of saxophone because it is just a gimmick. They don’t incorporate it into their musical character whatsoever, instead carelessly whipping the listener into musical sections fit for sax before quickly retreating to the same old trite, predictable progressive metal cliches. When other metal bands such as Hoplites, Rivers of Nihil, White Ward, and Epitimia have so effortlessly and capably built their identities around the saxophone, Shrezzers’ experimentation fails to even be forward thinking. Really, all they have done is add a second instrument to play masturbatory leads.
I should say that not everything here is terrible: the two transition songs are actually quite nice, some of the solos (guitar
and sax) do rip, “UVB-76” has an impressive riff in the first verse, and, unlike the rest of the album, “Temptura” actually manages to be sexy. None of the moments save
SEX & SAX of course, but they do hammer home the point that musicians of this caliber have no reason to play music this derivative, uncreative and uninteresting all in the service of a joke that really isn’t even that funny. Shrezzers already rebranded once before, back in 2017 when ‘Shredding Brazzers’ skirted a little too close to copyright infringement, and I think they should rebrand again. Quit f
ucking the dead gimmick.
