Review Summary: Somebody hand me a dictionary, cause I have no idea what "virulent" means.
Some bands when they start to rise, they stay on top, some begin to ruin their once great careers, but very few fall off in mid process. Within Chaos is one of those few bands, these guys were quickly on the rise once they signed to Koch Records (home of Otep, and Straight Line Stitch at the time), started touring with the likes of Bleed the Sky, Lazarus A.D, and Texas state buddies The Destro. They played all over the south and even got a slot at Ozzfest, things seemed to be going great….until one of the members used all the money they gained on tour to purchase cocaine, this angered the label and were dropped like a ten ton brick. They’ve never really been able to recover from this, and the only physical evidence of the band’s time with the label is this album, Virulent (which I have no idea what that means).
The band’s sound is simple, and nothing too complex or write home about. Basically metalcore with groove and thrash, to put it even simpler take Pantera, add in some Lamb of God vocals, throw in the occasional Slayer-esque guitar solo, and you’ve got this entire band in a nutshell. It’s pretty straight forward, and doesn’t take any chances, but it does offer it’s fair share of kick ass moments. The energy and flow of the songs are pretty darn, dare I say it….brutal.
The beginning track is an instrumental intro called “In the Beginning” how creative! It does have some nice, powerful drums though, gotta admit that. “What Doesn’t Kill You” throws in an easy Pantera-rip off riff, brings catchiness, although it gets pretty damn stale after a while. “Rebirth of Rebellion” sounds like something that tries too hard to be serious and sounds like something that could’ve been written by a teenage garage band. “Power Trip” is easily the best song on the entire album, it opens up with brutality and anger flowing rampantly. It’s seriously one of the most pissed off songs I’ve heard in a long, long while, it just makes you wanna slap yo’ mama! “The Order” & “Virulent” are pretty stale and don’t offer much to the table, they just kinda keep the album going, but it’s seriously such a let down. “Into the Shadows” takes the thrash influence to a new level it sounds more like old-Overkill then the other influences on the album, which is a nice step up from the last boring two. “Curveball” is much like the other tracks except with a noticeably more work thrown into it, the riff is catchier and the guitar solo is pretty bad ass. “Buried Alive” keeps it going with another catchy as hell riff, and a cool guitar solo (there seems to be a pattern here, don’t cha think?). “Pain is Temporary” is however the worst album closer that I could’ve imagined for this band, it’s just…..boring, nothing more just boring.
As you can tell, this band isn’t original by any means. They left us with an album that half of it isn’t too interesting and the other half of it is ho-hum. Gotta give some credit for Power Trip though….but that’ll be all that’s worth bragging about. You have an band that has potential to be the most bad ass band since Pantera threw away glam, but it falls flat on it's back for being generic.
Recommended Songs-
Power Trip
Into the Shadows
Curveball
Buried Alive
Songs to Skip-
The Order
Virulent
Pain is Temporary
