Review Summary: A fantastic example of the changes that have occurred in technical music, where playing fast now constitutes for a "solid" release, whereas in reality this is a drawn out, nonsensical album.
It would seem that we live in an age of complete opposites like to break and fix. The vast majority of bands in the music industry either want to play their music as simplistic as humanly possible (Asking Alexandria, Attack Attack) whereas certain groups of individuals decide to push the boundaries of technicality beyond anything released before. Whereas once the words "technical death metal" commanded respect through albums like Pierced From Within and Whisper Supremacy, it would appear that many people consider technical death metal to merely be an exercise in how fast one can play. Brain Drill is one of these bands.
The band originates from Ben Lomond in California, having formed in 2005 after guitarist Dylan Ruskin began to search for a drummer who could "play death metal" properly with the intentions of forming a side project. He eventually found Marco Pitruzzella who proved his technical ability by laying down a variety of blast beats at their first rehearsal, and then the search went on to find the rest of the band. In came Steve Rathjen on vocals and Jeff Hughell on bass, and the band then proceeded to release a demo tape before settling down to write a proper album. The album was written throughout 2007 and released in 2008 under the title of Apocalyptic Feasting.
All the way through its 35 minute duration, Apocalyptic Feasting proves that Brain Drill are a band among the new scene of music artists who feel the finest way to show technical prowess is to cram as many sweeps and blast beats into as short a space of time as possible, until all semblance of structure and sound is utterly demolished. Their songs lack any manner of cohesion and even the producer appears to be doing his utmost to distance himself from the band by ensuring the sounds of each instrument is absolutely insipid. The band is undeniably freakishly talented on their respective instrument but each song is a festival of how many notes can be played as swiftly as possible. The guitar relies heavily on sweep picking and finger tapping as many frets per time frame as the guitarist can and the bass is exactly the same. The drums are rather monotonous throughout, being played in excess of two hundred and fifty beats per minute for much of this album.
The best thing about this album is the fact that the songs are not particularly long. Occasionally the band shows a glimmer of musical talent, such as during the slower riff in the title track, but they even managed to mess that up by throwing a lazy sweep in between every few chugging notes. There are a few similar instances, where the guitarists and drummer decide to slow things right down for several seconds (possibly resting their wrists after the insanity that precedes these segments) but they can't seem to go more than ten seconds without either sweeping or casting pointless guitar wankery into the brewing pot. To top all this, the vocals are as one dimensional as it gets. Steve seriously only knows how to growl in one tone and his high screams are too raspy and sound forced. He literally sounds like the stereotypical "tough guy but talentless" vocalist who knows not how to actually put emotion into his growls.
There really is no point in looking at any of the tracks in detail as they literally all sound the exact same. The band's structures are all over the place and revolve around far too much fast guitar playing and drumming for any true fan of death metal to actually appreciate. Bury The Living and The Parasites are arguably the only semi-passable tracks on here for the simple fact that they sound a little more streamlined than tracks such as the title track and album closer Sadistic Abductive (what sort of title is that...). The fact that the album clocks in between thirty and forty minutes really means nothing here as this truly is nothing more than a snooze fest that deserves to forever be ignored.
