Review Summary: Guilty as charged
At first, Waco Jesus started off as a Lividity clone that just leaned more into deathgrind, and produced a pretty good, but overall a bit unremarkable brutal death metal debut. But with their second album, they would actually take aspects of their debut and turn it into something more unique.
One of the biggest upgrades is the dual vocals. Originally just copying Lividity’s black metal backing vocals/death metal front vocals, now they actually have range and trade off of each other. The drummer is given more of a spotlight here, and uses it effectively. John Baker goes from fast blast beats to nice fills, giving enough variation to really enhance the brutality. As for the guitars, they’re a bit buried but still give a great performance. A lot of the riffs are groovy and fast as hell, but sometimes do get more technical.
The best moments of this album are the duel vocals trading off of each other, John doing various blast beats mixed with fills, and the guitars grooving as fast as possible.
The production is also a big step. Instead of the semi-muffled mess that was The Destruction of Commercial Scum, this is cleaned up just enough to give just about every aspect time in the spotlight. But there must have been some issues in recording, as over halfway through the production changes to being slightly more muffled, putting the drums further in the back. It still fits with the music well, either way.
My biggest issue with this album is the snare tone, which is a massive disappointment compared to the debut. On TDOCS, it literally sounded like John was using a trash can as a snare, which I love. The tone here is wimpy and needs to be at least more pingy. I’m not sure what happened in that 4 year timespan.
Basically, its nonstop BDM/deathgrind that is pretty short, too. Only 25 minutes long. If you want a quick album that’s nasty and in your face, this is pretty good for that.
Recommended Tracks: Orgasm Is The Enemy, The Consequence of Your Ignorance, Blinded.
