As much as I loved bands like Napalm Death, the “grindcore”
\nphase of heavy metal was one that I was glad to see pass quickly.
\nIt wasn’t that the music was bad, it was that the field became so
\nsaturated that you couldn’t turn around without bumping into a
\ngroup where the vocals were growled or bellowed to the point of
\nbeing incomprehensible.<\/p>\n
If only Canada’s Civil Carnage had learned that lesson sooner –
\nbetter yet, had they learned to do simple things like “mic” the
\nsnare drum the right way, their latest album
\nAbomination In The House Of God<\/i> wouldn’t have been the
\nnightmare that it is. With one key exception, which we’ll talk
\nabout in due time, this is an album that has “been there, done
\nthat” written all over it, and is difficult to get through without
\nfalling asleep.<\/p>\n
Like most death\/grindcore bands, you’ve got your rhythm section
\nof bass (Chris MacInnis), guitars (Pat Storer, who also plays
\nkeyboards) and drums (Caley Zawadzki), all of which make it sound
\nlike the band is being electrocuted, the beats come that fast. Add
\nto this one scoop of “RRROOOAAARRR!!!”-style vocals (Keith Connel),
\nas well as no lyric sheet that could have actually helped get you
\nthrough the album, and – presto! – you have a grindcore band.<\/p>\n
Whoever decided that the sound of Zawadzki’s drums should be
\nhung by their manhood; the snare drum is so weak that it sounds
\nlike the microphone was in the next room while Zawadski was
\npounding away. The resulting sound for most of the album –
\nespecially on the opening track “Civil Carnage” – is disgustingly
\nbad. Drums – especially in this kind of metal – should have a snap
\nand crispness to it, not a sound like someone’s dog farted on the
\nsnare head.<\/p>\n
And I fully understand that the heart of grindcore are vocals
\nwhich you couldn’t decipher with the Rosetta Stone, but Connel
\nseems to get a little too serious into the game; often, it sounds
\nlike all he’s doing is clearing his throat into the microphone. The
\nexceptions come when he has an expletive to shout out; those come
\nacross clearly. C’mon, even Lee Dorian had a few phrases one could
\nunderstand when he fronted Napalm Death.<\/p>\n
So with all this negative talk about
\nAbomination In The House Of God<\/i>, how can I say there’s a
\nbright spot? Well, it comes at the end of the album, on the track
\n“12 Beer and An STD”, which features a hip-hop guest vocal courtesy
\nof Good In Theory’s Jeremy Hull. My first impression was, this is
\nwhat grindcore would sound like with Zack De La Rocha of Rage
\nAgainst The Machine doing vocals. The result is the one time I
\nfound myself smiling about this album, but it was too little, too
\nlate.<\/p>\n
\nAbomination In The House Of God<\/i> is an album from a group
\nthat seems to be stuck in the early ’90s. Sorry, gang, but the
\ngrindcore phase of metal is over. This album is pure evil – and I’m
\nnot talking blasphemous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7375],"rating":[11203],"class_list":["post-38931","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-civil-carnage","rating-rating-d-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38931","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=38931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38931"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38931"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}