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Victimizer > The Final Assault > Reviews
Victimizer - The Final Assault

what is the point of this - 40%

Noktorn, May 1st, 2009

This album is fucking all over the place musically, which makes it pretty remarkable that of all the places it goes, none of them manage to be places I'm interested in going. Victimizer plays a haphazard mixture of black, thrash, and melodic death metal, and the combination is just as indecisive and waffling as you can imagine it is. It manages to be so bland that without going back and skimming through tracks periodically, I literally cannot remember what it sounds like. Give me a moment to go back and listen to a bit.

*30 seconds later*

Yep it still sucks.

Amusingly enough, the main influence here seems to be early Children Of Bodom, you know, 'Something Wild'-era stuff. 'The Final Assault' has a very similar style of vocals and, at times, riffing and melody, though it's laced with black metal and certainly more fully thrashy. There's a lot of thrash beats and rhythmic tremolo riffs on this release, but the palm-muted chugging of thrash has been usurped by attempts at black metal melody; as you can tell, this is an album that's pretty varied, and more genuinely than just differentiating tracks through samples or gimmick riffs. Unfortunately, the fact that it's so varied is also its downfall, because the music is completely unable to establish a coherent sound.

Here's a thrash part, then there's a melodic death metal riff over a thrash beat, then there's a black metal part, none of this ever amounts to anything more than relatively listenable. While the music is inoffensive in aesthetic, it's completely shoddily constructed with riffs popping up, repeating a couple times, and being immediately cast aside with the realization that they went absolutely nowhere. The songs are fast but also oddly listless simply because they have no purpose; the riffs don't connect in any meaningful way and as a result the songs stew in their own juices without any sense of motion or dynamics.

There's worse things than this, but I still can't imagine a world in which I would actually listen to this regularly. The band's not entirely without potential; with some actual effort expended on the songwriting, these tracks could legitimately go places and do things. But as it stands, 'The Final Assault' leaves you with as much to think about as you had before you put the CD into your player: nothing.