Review Summary: Some good ideas with god-awful execution.
Usually I would open up a review with information about the album or band, but frankly I don’t want to. Go read the first review for that. All you need to know is that the two dudes who do Tougher Than Nails are very racist and not too keen on leftist politics.
I want to get into the music, which I feel is a bit overlooked due to of the themes of this album, which includes (but not limited to): advocating for genocide against minorities and sexuality that is not straight, and generally being really annoying about the fact that they’re racist and homophobic. The annoying bit comes into play on the latter half of the album.
Okay, let’s try to look on the bright side. The duo do an interesting take on death metal instrumentally, primarily using midi’s and drum machines for their sound. The noisy production altogether helps give it a grind edge. A lot of their song structures are quite stop-and-go, and I feel like they do it better than other death metal bands. Everything comes at a complete screeching halt due to the midi’s and drum machines they are using, and they go right back to it.
Everything else is terrible.
The first thing you’ll be greeted with is the worst intro to an album I couldn't think of.
It’s kind of pathetic, you can clearly hear each line cutting out at the end since they couldn't be damned enough to add a bit of time after the audio clip to make it flow at all. Each and every sentence in this intro does this. It's clear that these dudes want to be tough and stick it to those evil liberals, but it comes off as unintentionally hilarious.
Another thing that kills this album: the horrible pitch shifted vocals. It’s like they heard about pitch shifted vocals in goregrind and made it super dominant in the mix. You’ll be hearing some all right midi’s and all of the sudden one or both of these dumb***s comes on the mic and makes you recoil in disgust. It starts to get mind numbing after a couple songs.
Now for the more poorly done song structures. After the first four songs it starts to degrade. They start to get real lazy and just start looping a handful of drum machines and midi loops. With their horrible vocals it starts to turn maddening. Since the instrumentation has gotten that poor, you focus on the super dominant vocals. This is where the annoying “hey im racist and homophobic, lookatme” factor comes in.
The last two tracks of this album, The Racist’s Genocidal Kill Machine and Fought Till They Fell (Song of Victory) exaggerate these problems tenfold. During each of their six minute runtime, the same 1-2 minute loops are repeated endlessly while they growl about genocidal fantasies the entire damn time. What’s even worse is that Fought Till They Fell keeps on repeating this electronic midi the entire time that got grating after the first few loops.
Listening to these two songs more than once is a cruel and unusual punishment, no matter who you are.
I’m almost thankful I decided to listen to this, as I would not have been as brazen to just make death metal in a DAW and call it a day, along with noisy production. But at the same time this does not deserve anyone’s attention beyond that.
This album only serves to widen America’s already quite concerning political divide. They don’t even have a troll’s charm, only unlikability.
