Review Summary: Just listen to the original bands instead
YouTube sensations going on to have successful careers in music is nothing new. Hell - just look at some of the people featured in the tracklist of
How to Metal, Vol. 1 here; Justin Bonitz, who was mostly known as Hungry Lights, went on to have a lot of success with one of the spearheads of the nu metal revival in Tallah, has a vocal feature on this. So in a way, it’s like he’s going back to his roots and doing collaborations with other YouTubers. Nik Nocturnal really needs no introduction if you’re aware of his channel, but if not, he’s another one of those “metal” YouTubers that reacts to memes, does things like “Try Not to Headbang” challenges, what have you. He’s also gotten into the whole “write a bunch of songs in other bands’ styles” that other metal/rock channels like Ten Second Songs have done, to some success; his fans have been requesting full versions of the songs he was writing on Twitch streams.
Context is necessary here, because that’s exactly what the
How to Metal series is primed to be; effectively channeling the styles of 10 or so bands and consolidating it all into its own thing. Unlike Anthony Vincent of Ten Second Songs’ fame, Nik is just writing wholly original cuts, whereas Vincent was taking existing songs and warping them into other artists’ styles, so it’s different than just outright being a cover act. That comes with a cost though; the writing here feels extremely half-baked. After listening to all of this, I almost wish these WERE just covers, and the ultimate takeaway I had was the following: just listen to the original bands on a playlist instead.
First we have the Sleep Token-lite “Worship” opening the album, and it pretty much sounds like what people who hate Sleep Token think they sound like; everything’s haphazardly thrown together, and guest vocalist Cameron Humphrey’s attempt at channeling Vessel’s signature warbly affect just sounds weird, especially considering he sounds a lot better when he’s doing his own thing, like on the closer “Moan” which is supposedly meant to be a Deftones song. “Soul Eternal” is supposed to be a take on the entire discography of Bring Me the Horizon, and it really just sounds like a rejected cut from
Sempiternal overall. Victor Borba did his best, but it’s not like he was given a lot to work with. The absolute nadir of this project is the attempt at doing a Lorna Shore song in “Pain”. It’s astonishing how bad this sounds, and Dickie Allen just sounds obnoxious. Thankfully, everything else is at least passable in comparison.
The mixing is quite uneven at times; “Nein” (which if you haven’t already guessed, is a Rammstein sounding song) is mixed a good 10 dB below everything else and sounds ridiculous being so quiet amongst the rest. The drums on here all sound the same, but that’s mostly a consequence of whatever drum sampler Nik Nocturnal’s using here; it’s very clear that these are programmed. While that isn’t a problem in and of itself, the lack of dynamic in the drum mix is distracting. “Moan” doesn’t even come
close to matching Stephen Carpenter’s thick guitar tones in much of Deftones’ discography, and while I get they weren’t trying to 1:1 match everything, the mixing here leaves a lot to be desired.
Still, there is a silver lining here; “Primal” is headed vocally by the aforementioned Justin Bonitz, and is far and away the
best moment on this compilation. They’re going for a Korn-esque delivery on this one, and for the most part it feels like a hybrid between them and Linkin Park. Bonitz feels quite a bit more restrained than he does in Tallah, but he’s got enough talent that it helps mask some of that. It was definitely a missed opportunity to not get Griffin Taylor on “Mad”, but the guy he did get does a decent enough job at channeling older Slipknot. And for the most part, apart from “Pain”, these songs are listenable; “Chromatic” is very much a self-titled Avenged Sevenfold-style romp, similar to stuff like “Crossroads”, and I can’t say it’s
terrible at achieving that goal.
Overall, Nik Nocturnal is sure to please his core audience with this, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that everything here is just a half-baked version of older bands. The best thing it really does is give exposure to lesser known artists that make really good music on their own, such as Cameron Humphreys of Love Is Noise. Honestly, I’d even go as far as to say Jarrod Alonge did this whole idea better multiple years ago, and his work was an even more clear-cut case of parody than this is. Like “578”? Just go listen to the latest Bullet for My Valentine. “Nature”? Gojira has a wide discography. While this will surely be a good gateway for new fans, I can’t imagine long-time fans of all the bands here really being super into this.
