Review Summary: Nobody deserves this
I enjoy death metal for many reasons. I, like many others on this planet, enjoy excavating through the many layers of different unique instrumental structures, inspired guitar solos, captivating riffs, hidden melodies, and vocals resembling those of a monster one could find residing in the deepest levels of Hell. Whether the music is to be taken seriously or viewed as a humorous musical outing (I see no reason to not have a little fun while my ears explore their pleasures), I have the ability to find amusement almost anywhere in the scene. Still, everyone has their boundaries concerning what they will and won't listen to, and let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, after Pestilence have shat on a silver platter, disguised it as sparkling chocolate icecream and served it to my ears, I think it's safe to say that those boundaries I speak of have been adequately shattered and crossed. I don't ever enjoy when the aforementioned elements of death metal are taken advantage of in a way that causes the "music" to result in an atrocious pile of garbage. As an example of what I am speaking of, let us take a look at one of 2011's worst bottom-of-the-barrel records:
Doctrine.
Pestilence, once one of several musical gurus in the genre, have started transforming from a sufficiently inspired and destructive unit to a rather generic example of a modern death metal act attempting to sound old school. The transformation, neither expected nor unexpected, began with the release of the band's 2009 reunion album,
Resurrection Macabre, where the group looked to their past for ideas while also heeding to the new 21st century death metal audience. The outcome, though sounding a bit clichéd and ever more slightly unoriginal than the band's potential should have allowed for, is a fairly decent addition to the death metal catalogue as of late.
Doctrine, Pestilence's 2011 follow-up, is a joke from start to finish. Everything that makes a death metal album what it is is sure to be found here; HOWEVER, everything expected to make a death metal album worth listening to in any way, shape, or form (originality, inspiration, excitement, etc.) are completely exempt from
Doctrine. Instead, the band builds off of
Resurrection Macabre's cons and manages to pick up numerous others along the way. The guitars offer nothing but slower-paced riffs that end up resulting in dry attempts to sound colossal and sophisticated. These low-tempo riffs and down-tuned chugs remain constant throughout the whole album, so once one has listened to the second track (the first doing absolutely nothing other than adding to the album’s toolish atmosphere), they will know exactly what lies ahead (hey, there's a pro: the album is consistent!). And if the guitars weren't awful enough to deal with, making tremendous contributions to the pile of elephant-sized excrement that is
Doctrine's instrumentals is Patrick Mameli's vocal performance, an utterly horrendous vocal performance that stands beyond a point one could consider laughable. Comparable to those of someone getting shot in the ass, Mameli's weak voice and silly high-pitched cries do nothing but destroy whatever hope this album had to begin with.
There is some obvious experimentation going on on
Doctrine, though it’s a well-known fact that some experiments are destined for complete and utter failure. I mean, it's completely understandable if
Doctrine was a dream or a vision of sorts for members of Pestilence to fulfill: be courageous and do what you want to hear, not what the audience wants to hear, right? Well, this was most certainly an instance where it should have remained a dream or a vision, something that many years later the band could say "Hey, wouldn't it have been awesome if we tried this way back when?" (hah). And who knows? Maybe Pestilence had run into a dry spell with their creativity during the writing process for
Doctrine. I guess we'll have to wait and see for certain come 2013 whether or not they decide to rise from the ashes and make a tremendous recovery with
Obsideo or give us
Reunion III: Revenge of the Shit.
