Review Summary: awsome, pure genius in the time before a great genre got ruined by tight jeans and pig squeals
Deadguy was a band formed in 1994 that broke up in 1997, a much too short career for this band. And while they didn’t last very long they left a large impact on the music scene, particularly in the metal core genre. But this aint your teenage sisters metal core ala All that Remains and Killswitch Engage, This is metal core with 2 things these bands lack, originality and balls.
This is the last album this band produced, and while it does not contain 2 original members, it is my favourite album by the band. Now, this may not be the most technically perfect band out there, but this album shows a band that laid everything they had on tape. The screams are passionate, the drums pound, the guitars scratch, feedback and are imperfectly-perfect.
Let’s take a deeper look into the instruments, starting with the vocals. This was recorded before the days of “The Zen of Screaming” and people on YouTube teaching you how to scream, so the vocals here are in no way based of “proper technique”. However, this creates a very heartfelt and pissed of performance that makes you feel his anger. It doesn’t sound like he’s screaming cuz it’s the cool thing to do, it sound like he screaming because that’s what he needs to do, or he’s going to explode. So while it may not be as BR00TAL as some of today’s vocalists, its pissed off as ***, and that’s what I like about it. I’d comment on the lyrics, but I really don’t care to much about them, I’m more into the musical side of things, and I can’t find them on the interwebs.
As far as the guitars go, its what you’d expect from a 90’s metal core outfit (if you’re familiar with the genre) A lot of dissonance, a lot of chug, but not breakdown “Chug Chug Bree Bree” stuff. There are a lot of really cool riffs on this album however. The guitar work reminds me of Botch, but without the awesome melodic taping parts (not taking away from Deadguy, I just love that about Botch). Its also slightly sloppy sounding, not like they don’t know how to play their instruments sloppy, just in a one take no editing kind of way, which is awesome in my opinion, it gives it a very authentic feel.
The drums aren’t phenomenal, but they keep a steady beat among some odd time signatures, so props for that. You can really hear him pounding the drums in a lot of parts, and you can tell he’s very much a feel drummer by a lot of his beats, which Is always a plus for me (drummers who think to much can get boring, when it’s more about technicality than anything else). The bass doesn’t really stand out to much on this album, but it gets the job done, so not much to talk about there.
Overall, this may not be the best review, but this was an album I felt needed to be reviewed so I figured I’d give it a shot. This is a classic album (for me anyways) and always offers tons of inspiration. No standout tracks, the whole album kicks more ass than Jet Li on 4 red bull and blue M&M’s. Check this out, or miss out on a golden opportunity so have your mind blown.
