9 Dead
s/t

9 Dead, a band from New Jersey who recently released their self-titled debut that I am writing about today. It has been given a cool artwork, some silly corpse-like guys are on it, but in general it is very interesting and cool. The quartet has put together eight songs for it, and it plays for just over the half hour, which is good considering that it is said to be a shocking, unforgettable hell ride through sonic extremity, but with a rich palette of dynamics, mood and atmosphere. I just say: yeah, right. Or rather: it doesn’t contain anything even remotely close to that.

It is of the genre usually called brutal death metal, some chunky riffs, aggressive instrumentation and guttural noises instead of vocals. The singing is particularly ridiculous, mostly just noises and some word here and there. It kind of makes me think of Gollum from that terrible Lord of the Rings movie – kind of sounds like that. The press material is right about the variation though, as there is some of that, even some semi-surprising things, but it is mostly a rather predictable album, with a very typical sound despite some spacey detours here and there.

The track called Andromeda breaks with most of the album with its mood and tranquil atmosphere, it is the only thing remotely acceptable on this album – the rest is crap. Is it nasty to write something like that to a debuting band having high hopes for their first album, perhaps dreaming of good reviews? Well, it is what I think, and I always write what I think about the albums that I review. This was certainly not an impressive thing, more like torture.

But what if I am a fan of brutal death metal? If you are then you don’t really share my taste in music, but there are some that I like in that genre as well. This is not one of them. I wouldn’t recommend it, but if you are a fan it is probably worth checking it out, listening to some samples, or whatever. But in the end it is just another addition to the ever-growing mainstream of meaningless, mediocre albums that rapidly dilutes and lower the quality of the hardrock and metal genres. If no one buys stuff like this it is probably a signal to labels of not releasing it, it is hard to stop people from doing what they like but normally the rest of the world don’t need or want to hear what they do.

HHHHHHH