Review Summary: ok boomer
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Sputnik Music Auditory Health Centre (SAHC): Full Debriefing Report
SUBJECT REPORT/ANALYSIS: “
downset. –
Maintain” (10/6/2022)
Doctor: Adeline “STIGMATIZED” Spearmint
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Since around 2016 or so, the Sputnikmusic Auditory Health Centre has reported that rock/heavy metal bands/singers from the 1990s/2000s have been suffering from an endemic plague called the “so-called relatability delusion” disease; SORD-16 for short. It is widely nicknamed as the “OK Boomer Rock Disease” by the public and media outlets. The symptoms of this growing and mutating disease are not limited to, but include;
1. Hyperfocus on being cool, politics, freedom, and being the greatest/better than everyone else (aka preachy), compromise of musical integrity that was previously unaffected
2. Poor execution of said hyperfocus, due to/caused by poor production values or general lethargy of the infected’s performance
3. Lack of/reduced relatability with a younger, more politically active population due to age, likely in 40–60+ years of age, and failure to recognise this earlier (also known as “Elder Statesperson Disorder”, or ESD)
4. Overindulgence in “proving a point/credibility”, leading to poor/bad/edgy/victimised lyrics that are boring/painful to listen to and public disapproval.
Our latest patient who was urgently rushed into the hospital ward was the 1990s rapcore band “
downset.”, best known for their harsh and politically visceral and potent bars on their albums. This is the first time the band has been seen since the band went AWOL after their decent comeback album
One Blood, in 2014. Their reappearance was first reported in February 2022, and was reported to be showing signs of “return to roots”; SAHC identified this to be of the “marketing ploy” variant; the subject had reported they would be using Drop C guitar tuning again like the band’s excellent 1994 debut album, despite the fact this tuning has been used in all of the bands albums and is not a unique characteristic. We only realised the growing severity of the situation of April 29, 2022 when
downset. released “The Place To Be”, which was reported by the public to be showing early warning signs of SORD-16 through its lethargic/pedestrian pace and “preachiness to younger populations” compared to when last seen. Unfortunately, SAHC could not locate the subject until they were in a critical condition two months later on June 10, 2022. At the place where the subject was found, we found various copies of a compact disc called “
Maintain”, which we at SAHC have taken as evidence to understand how the subject’s condition was before we were able to start treating
downset.
As painfully and dishearteningly ironic as it is,
downset. failed to
Maintain (sic) their previously set standards of music quality. (Even if it pretty consistent, compared to a lot of the band’s older material). The most noticeable trait of the subject’s disorder is immediate from the first ten seconds of our auditory tests; the album’s bass guitar was a weak hum in the background that is audible but not generally distinguishable, only to become further submerged below the drums, and then barely even distinguishable under the waves of digitised/processed guitars. Then, as we heard the subject’s voice, we realised the severity of the disease on the health of
downset., as the band’s vocalist, Rey Oropeza, immediately strains in his chants/shouts of “Fighting again! Fighting again!”; as soon as we heard that, we knew what we were in for. SORD-16 has had an especially profound effect on Rey Oropeza; he has also lost the ability to perform nuanced messages, instead coming off as simplistic and slightly childish (“If expression is restricted it will lead to such a tremendous loss/The magnitude of this possibility should never be forgotten”). This attitude is unfortunately amplified for the worst by Oropeza falsely being under the impression he was part of the Wu-Tang Clan and not
downset. While (since
DWSADL? in 1996) the band has repeatedly dabbled with fantasy elements in the past, especially on
Universal, the simplistic manner to which they are presented in lowers the quality to that of any cliche-d fantasy novel with poor narration; for example, “Seven seals will be broken and mysteries will be explained/Modern equations of data will be tested in the flames”. Our personal least favourite of these try-hard lyrics is “That burst selected ethnic metric/Method of tension prophetic/Intention to flip your whole section/Silence broken infectious connection” (“Positive Mind”).... with awkward pauses in between each of these verses. Also in that vein, Oropeza, a 52 year old man (to the best of our research), decided to make himself into a complete f–king clown with his faux-attitude, forcing himself into the position he’s one of the greatest rappers of all time (with zero RIAA certifications) and “extremely popular to this day”; as a result,
downset. deluded themselves into thinking they can “drop the hyped tracks and pump the beats fat” (yes, this is an actual lyric on this album) and that they are “OGs”; this attitude combined with stupid lyrics, e.g “How much dope you trunk and how much pussy you f–k/Don't mean sh-t to me believe I'm flipping symmetry” (which is quite possibly the the spiritual successor to “f–king magnets/how do they work” by ICP), means for the most part this album cannot be taken seriously in its messages. A lot of what Oropreza discusses is how he’s come so far and he needs to “maintain” his status, crew, family; but because of his own idiotic choices here he loses all chances of successfully maintaining his own seal of quality. With all the "trendiness", one can simply scream one word; "OK boomer". Because that's just all that can be said. And thus, with the lyrics having no meaning, the attention turns back on
downset. again. Oropeza also proves to be substantially weaker than he used to be with not as aggressive/clean vocals (yes, worse than
Universal), and when used comes off as uninspired and uninterested; this is especially noticeable in the beginning of “On Lock (Only The Defest*)”, where his attempts at being somewhat “soulful” are painfully thin, as well as on “Hear Me Now”. The album’s penultimate song, “Deeper”, shows the true extent of the disease’s awfulness; with an awful “and it’s serious” hook/chorus (I don’t even know) that I can’t even explain. The song is like a bad modern copy of “Holding Hands” with some actually awful vocals that made us laugh and cry at the same time over its mere existence, and to prolong the suffering it is the album’s longest track at 3:50 seconds. We actually had a poll, and we have declared it the worst
downset. song to exist through unanimous vote. However, frankly multiple moments on this record vocally are just as worthy of that title. Another piece of note is the attempted “hardcore breakdown” of “On Lock”, he sounds like at some point he’s going to bring that beat back like it’s 1997 for all thoughts and purposes– seriously. I haven’t even talked about production yet, but we’ll get to that once we discuss the music.
SORD-16 also brought its negative effects onto the music, which is noticeably simpler as well and comparable to a poor clone of (modern era) Body Count. While for the most part the instruments are played very well and there’s some excellent melodies here and instrumental performances, the album is rather pedestrian by
downset.’s standards and the slowness really pulls on the attention span. There’s a real sense of lethargy in the instruments, and compared to previous albums the production is sapped of all timbre and powerful distortion. It’s also noted that the composition of the songs has become extremely simple, especially when compared to
Universal and
One Blood. The production diluted the effectiveness of the subject’s musicianship; it’s flat and unforgiving and doesn’t even allow the hardcore punk-speed moments of the album (on “Wreck It” and “Hear Me Now”) have a chance of being properly good tracks. And vocal production; oh god, the chants on “Maintain” and “Deeper”, the screams and chants are exceptionally poorly mixed. We all wanted to headbang to this album but sometimes it’s as slippery as oil in terms of memorability/unique characteristics. It is also noted that the growing effects of SORD-16 evidently occurred over a prolonged period of time, and that we noticed a slightly formulaic pattern throughout
Maintain; the first five songs of
Maintain (and most of the album's songs) all begin with some sort of chant or ad-lib, which are usually embarrassingly bad/barely catchy, such as on “Wreck It” (“Can I move you/Can I move you/Can we wreck the place/Wreck it Wreck it”) and “Positive Mind” (“Positive energy! Positive mind!”, ad nauseam for nearly a minute). This lack of musical diversity or even risk from
downset. to maybe make the songs not so similar to each other makes every song rather unmemorable besides the poor vocal performances which will unfortunately haunt all of us here at SAHC; I know
downset. has that song “Pure Trauma”, but I didn’t think they actually wanted to inflict it on us! (keep calm, positive energy, positive energy, positive mind, positive mind… forever ingrained in my head like a scar.) If you want a contrasting way of being both simple and catchy musically no matter what quality your songs are, just look at Coal Chamber’s 1997 self-titled record. The reason it’s a decent record is simply the fact it remains in your head with GOOD HOOKS; on the other hand,
Maintain lacks any real or strong hooks that make it enjoyable and instead feels forced in there to make it “catchy”, or something; evidently, when we found “downset.”, they were in a very warped and contorted state, so we don’t really know what to describe it as, apart from "f--ked".
With these two not-so-good elements combined, SAHC has concluded that as a result of SORD-16 and the subsequent creation of
Maintain, the band had critically injured itself with its own self-immolating molotov cocktail; the music, production and vocals with their tragic tragic disconnects, combined with the poor attempts to stay up with modern musical trends, so the band could (according to the band’s guitarist Roy Z) “set an example for our youth”; if
downset. thinks/thought the “youth” is listening to them in the way they believe they are, they were simply delusional which likely led to their critically injured state. SAHC has currently been looking after
downset. for the past couple of days, and has suggested two possible treatments for the band to not suffer from this disease again;
1.
downset. must understand their errors with immediate force; learn from this mistake over a period of time and never replicate the faults in studio or live; this will accelerate the remission of the band back to full health again.
2. Participate in a songwriting class to regain the lost mojo/health caused by SORD-16.
3. Commit voluntary euthanasia/end
downset.; as to not continue the suffering of their listeners/health/reputation, if they (and only them) realise that they will not make a recovery.
But in all seriousness, despite what has gone wrong,
downset. are lucky it didn’t get worse or kill anyone; we all survived. But it wasn’t a pleasant by any means to deal with, and hopefully they won’t need to revisit SAHC again under the same circumstances. Dear
downset.; if you are reading this, don’t come back here in the same state again. We’ll perform involuntary euthanasia. This situation is dumb. This album is dumb. You (downset.) are even dumber for even thinking this would even work; how the f--k did you get here in the first place?
Overall health: 2/5 (Poor)
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(
downset.: DISCHARGED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE 14/6/2022)
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*what does defest mean???
find the album here: https://bfan.link/downset-Maintain
