I guess when you pick up an album by a band named Pissing
\nRazors, you have an idea that what is on the slab of aluminum and
\nplastic inside isn’t compositions by Yanni.<\/p>\n
But you might expect to hear some sort of evil noise, judging
\nfrom the cover artwork on this El Paso, Texas band’s debut effort.
\nAnd, in a sense, you’d be wrong. Pissing Razors is an intense band,
\nbut they throw some curveballs into their style of metal, and end
\nup with an album that has some fine moments, but still shows the
\nband has some work left to do.<\/p>\n
The band – vocalist Joe Rodriguez, guitarist Matt Lynch, bassist
\nRick Valles and drummer Eddy Garcia – reminds me a lot of Pantera
\nin their attack on the music. Rodriguez alternates between a
\nhalfway decent singing voice (let’s be honest, some metal is not
\nmeant to be
\nsung<\/i>, per se) and an intense bellowing – decent enough, but
\nnot enough of his own style to stand out in my mind.<\/p>\n
Tracks like “Dodging Bullets,” “Where We Come From” and
\n“Permanent” all show that there is more to
\nPissing Razors<\/i> than just screaming and playing one’s
\ninstruments like they were being thrown into a hydraulic press.
\nMore than once, I detected hints of progressive rock in the way
\nthat Pissing Razors shifted musical style and tempo as swiftly as
\none would make a chord change. That’s proof enough for me that the
\nrhythm section is tight enough to withstand any change thrown their
\nway.<\/p>\n
But standing out on a few tracks is one thing; making an album
\nfilled with songs that hold their own water is another. And while
\nthe material on this album is good, it doesn’t always seem like all
\nthe tracks are pulling their own weight. The spoken word recitation
\nby Warlock (
\nwho?!?<\/i>) on “Sounds Of Doom” almost sounds like Bobcat
\nGoldthwait trying to be a metalhead – and it just doesn’t work. And
\nthe occasional rap that I heard scattered within – sorry, gang,
\nit’s been done before.<\/p>\n
\nPissing Razors<\/i>, in the end, seems like an album featuring a
\nband struggling to find their own unique sound in a musical genre
\nstill smarting from the influx of cheesy bands that almost killed
\nthe genre in the late ’80s and early ’90s. It’s still a good album,
\nbut the band sounds like they’re capable of so much more. (They
\nhave a new album tentatively scheduled for release the first
\nquarter of 1999; it will be interesting to hear how the band has
\ngrown in nearly the year since this one was released.)<\/p>\n
Pissing Razors the band is a group that has enough promise to
\nspark my interest in them for the long run.
\nPissing Razors<\/i> the album is a work that has a lot of promise
\n– as well as a few unfulfilled ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6065],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-36153","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-pissing-razors","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36153"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36153"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}