Review Summary: A solid release by a band with some minor flaws, Imperfect Like a God is a solid showcase of ridiculously heavy death metal.
Death metal is easily one of the most polarized genres as far as quality goes. It’s such an easy genre to do badly that it’s almost comical in respect to the consistent high quality of early-age material. Bands like
Morbid Angel,
Death, and others put out consistently strong albums for years before the idiots came along and made it awful. Even though the touch of the fool is inescapable, the mark it leaves can be much more devastating to some things than others. Poland’s
Trauma (and you must say Poland’s, because there are 56000005897 other bands named
Trauma) is here to show what’s great about death metal, and what has happened to it these past two decades. Fortunately for them, their skills allow the good to far outweigh the bad; a relief, because an overindulgence of certain qualities could have sent them into a realm of laughable music quality.
Death metal has, as long as it’s been alive, known for putting out some of the most punishing and intense material that music can offer. Unfortunately, it has also become known for putting out some of the most awful and unbearable material music has to offer. The reasons for this happening are as vast as can be, but many would claim it’s “all because of those angst-filled scene kids and their arm flailing bla bla bla”. For the most part, this is entirely unreasonable and false; the quality all of things wanes as time goes by. The extent to which individual things wane, however, varies greatly; as it happens, death metal’s quality depleted almost immediately after its conception. As soon as
Atheist and
Cynic were plugging away unique releases, so too were bands like
Cannibal Corpse there to mess everything up. With the introduction of breakdowns and other obnoxious elements through the creation of metalcore, death metal is slowly dying an undignified death. Bands like
Trauma, however, show there is some hope.
It is entirely possible to mix the unnecessary abnormalities of the ‘core aspects without completely diluting the sound of death metal (or any other metal, for that matter).
Trauma begins with a solid foundation of death metal basics; groovy face-melting riffs, pounding drums, and throaty vocals. As far as the guitars are concerned, everything is by the basics; frantic time signature-changes and mid-pace shredding are abound. The bass is, of course, almost completely lost in the mix save for very few select spots, such as the very beginning of the second track.
Everything is executed with a precision that gives the idea that
Trauma know exactly what they are doing, and to hell if anyone doesn’t like it. Solos come only once a song (at most), breakdowns are rare and excellently implemented; it’s the “brees”, so-to-say, that give the impression that the band is talented, but not giving their full effort. Often, a line will come up where it feels as though instead of finishing the riff with a solid structure, they decided to through in a pinch-harmonic and repeat. The first time around, this sounds nifty – that is, until you hear it on every single song.
Trauma has a core of solid musicians; they’re just blatantly lazy. They offer solid, slightly melodic crushing riffs, and then throw it somewhat away by wanking unnecessarily on their guitar. This small flaw, however, does not outweigh the quality of their riffs; they are truly awe-inspiring in how heavy they sound.
Additionally, the drums, although solid in execution, have one unforgivably obnoxious flaw; the triggers for the bass pedal are mixed over just about everything. This wouldn’t be so bad if the bass pedal sounded good, but it doesn’t. It sounds overproduced and mechanical; the tone is flat and dull. All the life has been sapped out of the drum. This can work in some situations, usually when the bass is lower in the mix; not so here. It comes off as overbearing and peeving. Sadly, combined with the lack of an audible bass, the rhythm section tends to fall flat on its face at parts because of the nauseating double-bass sound.
One other area that is of concern is the vocals; sounding right of the book of early 90’s bands, the vocalist sometimes growls, sometimes raspy-shouts. Unfortunately, the shouts are what need work; they come of sounding just silly. When most of the song is deep throaty growls, and suddenly you hear a man feebly shout “why do you bother meeeee”, it’s hard not to let forth a chuckle at how ridiculous it sounds. It’s clear that the vocalist has a fairly sizeable amount of talent, evidenced by the growl at the beginning of the first track. There are just spots, all over the album, where the band, or the vocalist, decided to try something different; there’s a moment where electronic effects are applied to give the vocalist a gargling tone – it sounds stupid.
Trauma play a somewhat melodically tinged brand of death metal, but melo-death this is not. With pounding drums, unrelenting guitars and throaty vocals,
Trauma waste no time getting straight to business. Minus some unnecessary unattractive business,
Imperfect Like a God is death metal done right. If they work out their flaws, add just a touch of polish, and a pinch of originality, this band could be a shining gem amongst the oversaturated and decaying death metal scene.
