“I felt awful foolish choosing Skindred’s promo when no one else did. My brain was adequately pummeled by single “Gimme That Boom,” complete with its curb-stomping riffs, plodding drums, and Benji Webbe’s formidable vocals and memorable one-liners, providing a perfect soundtrack for the NFL intro to Thursday Night Football. While grooving, I kinda forgot about the fact that the Welsh quartet was a force to be reckoned with in the late 2000s and early 2010s.” Skin in the game.
“Though absurd on so many levels, let’s imagine what it would be like to combine the aggressiveness of Down’s ‘Lifer’ and the catchiness of ‘On March the Saints’ with the comeback power of Machine Head’s ‘Imperium’ and the apocalyptic ‘Halo,’ all wrapped up in VH1’s second favorite grunge band, Alice in Chains. That must mean Damn Your Eyes’ debut record, Kill the Outside, sounds like ‘Aesthetics of Hate’-meets-‘Down in a Hole’-meets-‘Bury Me in Smoke,’ right? Wrong.” Damn you ears.
“Given that I have a great relationship with my father, didn’t get bullied in high school, and don’t hate my hometown, my qualifications to review nu-metal are basically nil. Alas, I’ve made my superiors here rather upset in some way, shape, or form and have been duly saddled with a Greek nu-metal opus in the form of Project Theory’s Something between Us.” Ouch.
“Umm, I’ll be honest with you. I really wasn’t looking forward to this album. As much as I worship Sir Russell Allen (Symphony X, Allen/Lande) and his golden pipes of steel, I really hate this hard rock/nu-metal side project he has going on with friends. Their Omerta debut was a painfully shallow, cringe-inducing foray into Disturbed styled nu-metal mixed with grungy barroom rock and it really didn’t work, even with Allen on vocals and Little Lord Mike Portnoy (ex-Dream Theater, Liquid Tension Experiment) on drums.” The Mob is back again. Do they rule yet?
I’m a Russell Allen fanboy. I sing his praises every chance I get because he’s one of the best vocalists to ever grace the metal genre. Whether its his work with Symphony X, Allen/Lande or Star One, his vocals make good music great and great music stupendous. It was only a matter of time however, until we found out what his vocals could do for average or bad music.
