“In popular music, the West Coast is known for the smooth, extravagant, and maximal productions of Dr. Dre, while the East Coast is known for the grimy, gritty, and dusty productions of Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA. I prefer the latter, and when it comes to slam, travelling further East gets me the grotesquery I crave.” Slam of the rising sun.
“Some people spend their weekend running errands, and I’m no different. This weekend, as I write this review, I’ll be running a fool’s errand and disagreeing with the genre tag of a “deathcore” album. Genre fans and detractors will have the same reaction: “who cares, it’s all about the chugs anyway.” You chug water for different reasons than you chug beer (unless it’s Coors Light, which is both). The Rack chugs and Eternal Nightmare chugs. Disma chugs and Carnifex chugs. All of this is to say, Eye of the Destroyer’s second LP is beatdown, not deathcore.” Advanced pigeonholing.
“Being a grown adult capable of reading books written for adults instead of fawning over ones written for preteens, it pains me to reference Harry Potter but here goes: remember when Jelly Belly made those Harry Potter jelly beans with gross flavors? Vomit, snot, and things like that were inexplicably put into candy form, and of course I ate every bad flavor; sometimes subjecting yourself to gross and tasteless things is thrilling and enticing. Which brings us to Angry White Elephant’s debut vs. The Wooden Cobra…” Always bet on Cobra.
“Back in high school, metal fans, me ashamedly included, compared our chosen genre to classical in its proficiency and complexity, and laughed at the other “dumb” genres for their lack of “intelligent” lyrics and themes. What intolerable pricks were we. I can confidently say that, had I been in that woefully immature mindset currently, I would not have enjoyed anything about Vulvodynia. Their second full-length Psychosadistic Design is everything the intelligent pretentious types love to hate: it’s loud, it’s obnoxious, it’s hilariously over-the-top in its lyrical effrontery, and it chugs more than someone getting perpetually annihilated at beer pong. And honestly, I haven’t had this much fun with slamming brutal death metal in years.” Slam the torpedoes, full chug ahead!
