Review Summary: PLEASE KILL ME
*cue 2001: A Space Odyssey title music*
Behold: the worst ***ing thing to ever happen, ever.
Do you think all former Five Finger Death Punch members sit around and think of ways to make even worse music then they did before? I sure hope not, because we’d have more bands like Psychosexual to lament over. Drummer Jeremy Spencer famously left FFDP to pursue his dream of being a police officer, where he worked in Indiana for roughly a year. However, the music bug was clearly biting him, and within a year had Spencer created a new side project to vent his frustrations in; Psychosexual, an industrial metal piece almost entirely focused on themes of hardcore sex. In it, however, Spencer has left drumming duties and now performs as the band’s lead singer, all while donning red face paint and going under the alter ego stage name Devil Daddy. If literally anything you just read above sounds even halfway promising, perhaps there is no hope at all.
In short, Psychosexual’s debut album is one of the worst albums this century, and perhaps of all time. If you put a .45 to my head told me to name one positive thing about this album, I’d tell you to pull the trigger. Listening to Pyschosexual induces similar reactions and emotions to that of listening to BrokenCYDE, dot dot curve :), Lie Or Liar, Etienne Sin, Myrimin, Blood On The Dance Floor, or any other “worst band of all time” contender. The album produces a wide and varied range of emotions from its listener, including laughter, cringe, embarrassment, frustration, befuddlement, and flat out boredom.
But why exactly is Psychosexual such an abomination of all things auditory? I suppose we should start with Jeremey Spencer - ahem, “Devil Daddy” (no, I’m not calling him that.) He should’ve stuck with drumming. Spencer clearly cannot sing at all and finds it necessary to bury his voice under 17 layers of filters at all times. I’m honestly not sure if we every hear his real voice without the overproduced fuzz and autotune. Despite the valliant efforts from the mixers and producers, it still cant mask the fact that Spencer possesses zero vocal capabilities at all. He is clearly trying to emulate the same baritone “alpha” deep-voiced vocal style that FFDP and too many other modern metal bands are known for. However, while Tommy Vext and Ivan Moody still are obnoxiously psuedo-masculine with their “testosterone coursing thru my bulging muscles!!!” vocal affliction, it’s now apparent that those two men at least have talent, range, and don’t need to rely on a million vocal effects to sustain their voices. Spencer spends the entire album singing in the same monotonous octave, probably because that’s all he can sing. His 6 semioctave range means Spencer will likely go down as one of the lousiest singers in vocal history. Whether he’s going for an ominously quiet verse, a poppy melodic chorus, or the epic buildup in the bridge, it simply doesn’t matter; not a single time does he venture outside the same C3 to G3 range. There are death mtal growlers with more depth and versatility than Spencer.
Moving onto the band’s sound is an entirely different beast. If you’ve played any modern Call Of Duty game, or seen any Michael Bay action film, you probably know that stock crunchy guitar fused with glitchy effects and dramatic orchestrals. For the gamers out there, just imagine the score to Modern Warfare 2 with a bad Tommy Vext impersonator rambling about sex. It’s horrible watered-down fusion of FFDP, modern Disturbed, Marilyn Manson, and some generic industrial crap you’d find on Bandcamp, but as if all written and composed by a sexually-confused would-be 5th grade school shooter. Psychosexual mixes 8-stringed generic modern metal chugs with fuzzy industrial static and dark electronic blips and beeps. The mixing is horrible and causes the overproduced sludge to turn into white noise at certain times. The guitars are almost always far too quiet in the mix and often times you don’t even realize they’re there at all...though, are you really clamoring to hear the same quasi-djent chugs every uninspired modern metal band utilizes these days? However, abysmal production comes second to the even more abysmal songwriting. Calling these tracks lazy, unambitious, uninspired, and lacking creativity are major understatements; these songs sound flat-out royalty-free and free-to-use. I’m being literal when I say that every single song sounds absolutely indistinguishable from the last, and the fact that they managed to stretch this heap of an album to 12 songs is remarkable, both in a good and bad way. Every single damn song has the exact same structure, the exact same tempo, the exact same “riffs” if you could call them that, and the exact same sound. You could listen to this album front-to-back 500 times and still not be able distinguish any songs at the end of it. In fact, I’m not sure if I can name an album as monotonous as this one.
Finally we bring ourselves to the “icing” on this *** cake. Icing is in quotations because, after hearing this album, I’ll never be able to think of icing as anything but manlovejuice ever again. If you haven’t guessed from that sentence alone, or anything I stated above, Psychosexual know one topic and one topic only: rough, uncensored, sweaty sexytime, sometimes even without consent. Perhaps some of these songs could work if they were trying to be funny, like “Baby On Fire” initially reminded me of Anal Cunt’s “I Lit Your Baby On Fire”. I figured the song would be some edgy, dark-humored song about literally setting babies on fire much like the aforementioned Anal Cunt song, but no, it’s of course about party sex.
Check out some of these horrendous lyrics, from the album’s big single, “Let The Sin Begin”:
“Let the let the sin begin, you’ll be wiping off my love that’s dripping from your chin / your Devil Daddy’s gonna spank you over and over again”
These are from “I Bite”: “I break down your door, creep across your floor, *** you forevermore, make you Devil Daddy’s bottom whore, you’ll beg and cry for more”
Nevermind the fact that Spencer loves referencing himself in the third person, but he clearly takes inspiration from Nickelback, Theory of a Deadman, and Dr Suess. Even 2007-era Nickelback and Theory Of A Deadman would be shaking their heads at this. However, the lyrics aren’t the only bad due to their juvenile sexually-charged nature; they’re just flatout poorly written. Spencer rhymes “fire” and “desire” on three different songs. The chorus of “Let The Sin Begin” goes “I’ll *** you with fire like you’ve never been”. So, is he literally penetrating her with a flaming dildo? And, “like you’ve never been” what? Could you not fit the word “before” at the end? Also, Spencer accidentally reveals he has erectile disfunction with the line “Would you like to take a little pill? One that leads, leads to bigger thrills.” I guess without that pill, those thrills would be pretty small.
Can I just end this now? I put more effort into the review than they did this entire album. I read an interview where Spencer said he originally started the project as an 80s synth-wave band, but his love for metal influenced him to go darker, and that the entire album was written in two weeks. That’s about two weeks longer than I would’ve thought. Overall, there is not a single tolerable element about this grotesque tumor of an album. No microscope or UV light could ever pick up even the slightest positive thing to say about this, though I shiver at the thought of shining a UV light onto this disgustin, disease-ridden used-condom of an album. The fact that it fails in every single possible category is actually quite an accomplishment. If anything, Psychosexual only gives a disturbing insight into the psyche of a man who’s supposed to be enforcing the law. Do you think Spencer was writing lyrics while on the job? I can imagine him sitting hidden from the road in his police Charger (he demanded the Charger because it’s way more manly and alpha than Crown Vics and Impalas), munching on donuts and jotting sex-fueled ideas into his Rockport PD notepad while waiting for an unsuspecting driver to go past him four miles over the speed limit. It all makes too much sense.
