Marinate Your Meat

I never really understood the appeal of this punky breed of death metal that mostly comes out of western Europe. The qualities of the genres often just seem to cancel each other out, resulting in death metal without aggression and brutality and punk without catchy riffs and vocals. If it can be done effectively (and I think it probably could, though I don't know how it would happen), it sure as hell isn't being done on 'Marinate Your Meat', because this is some boring-ass music from top to bottom. I'm sure there's plenty of people who have a special affinity for stuff like this, but damn if it doesn't seem pretty limp to me.

It seems to me that Disastrous Murmur is attempting to replicate the sound of latter-era Pungent Stench. They have a lot of the same characteristics: punk-edged death metal that's deeply oldschool, big bass presence, sense of juvenile humor, similar general song structures, etc. The crucial difference is that Pungent Stench wrote good, catchy songs with clever lyrics and great riffs. Disastrous Murmur does none of that and just churns out bland tracks that are completely unmemorable. I can see that they're at least TRYING to make good stuff, but I don't give A's for effort. This is exactly the sort of thing you'd think of if you thought of a mixture of punk and death metal, and it's just like it probably sounds being described: bad.

All the riffs are overly goofy, jaunty little guitar lines with no real intensity and all the melodies sound like they were taken out of a Simpsons Halloween special with some thrashy palm muting carelessly tossed in. Vocals are a bland growl that's mostly inaudible, and drums are predictable and lifeless. The bass pops out with the odd fill, probably to sound wacky and spontaneous but really just inspiring eye-rolling on the part of the listener. Even the song structures are lame; half the time there aren't even transitions between riffs, the band just stops and changes gears abruptly into something that's just as boring as the last. The whole thing is very uninspired and doesn't have anything good really going for it.

This isn't the worst thing I've ever heard, but it is pretty bad. I've never heard death metal sound so perky and goofy and, well, the opposite of everything death metal should ideally be. Maybe some people like it, but this is just lame to me. Too much other, better stuff to listen to in its place.