Defeat

California's Armed for Apocalypse stand at an interesting crossroads between the thick, volcanic guitars which define 'sludge metal', and just about every annoying element of metalcore or Pantera-style groove metal that you could conceive. Into this they inject a little melody which often takes you unexpectedly and makes for most of the better moments on the disc. I found the album frustrating, because every moment I enjoyed was quickly counterbalanced by shitty chug-a-long meathead moshcore 101.

Seriously. It's like prospecting a river, sifting through your pan to find those little bits of gold which you know are coming. "Fists of God" starts off like a boring Meshuggah clone...then tears into this kick ass melodic groove rhythm. "Hero Complex" is slow and doomy, then picks up into a Down-like groove metal with awful metalcore vocals. "A Failure" is thrashcore with some nice bridge melodies and gangshouts. "Torch Light Search for the Dead" has walls of lurching mosh ripe for the fratboy pit. Speaking of Down, the album has a cover of "Temptation's Wings" hidden at the end. The mix sounds monolithic, with crushing guitar tones and vocals all over the place. I want to sleep with 50% of this record, kill the other half, and marry none of it.

Highlights: A Failure, Torch Light Search for the Dead

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

It's taken a few repeated listens to work out how best to describe Armed For Apocalypse, and d'you know what, I'm still having some difficulties. AFA, of California, on the basis of debut album and sole release thus far, "Defeat", have a fetish for mixing up largely disparate styles of metal/deathcore, sludge and doom, showing the positive and negative sides that are commonly associated with such tactics.

It isn't until song five, "Hero Complex", that it feels like AFA have reached the point at which they really know what they're doing in a song recalling Down most prominently. You see it's because the first four tracks, a mixed bag at the best of times with some moments heavy here and some heavy there but they are all, without fail, dragged down into the lands of mediocrity that come with sticking a big fat, cumbersome beatdown in the middle of a song. Opener "We Fell From The Bottom" and "A Failure", not the best songs ever anyway due to the key riffs interspersed within providing little emotional and technical depth with which to grab the listener, sound like a band aiming to be as sonically heavy as possible in keeping with the likes of Oceano yet forgetting to write songs containing flow and a sense of togetherness. "Fists Of God" is no better but is noteworthy for bringing a "Roots Bloody Roots"-era Sepultura sound to the party, especially in the bass end of the mix, underneath a screamed vocal style not dissimilar to one of sludge’s key bands, Johnny Morrow of Iron Monkey.

The second half of the album saves AFA's bacon by giving us riffs that offer more than being simple down-tuned chugfests and laying off the beatdowns in the period of the album that best displays the band's sludge roots. The groovy, swaggering "Hero Complex" features by far the best riff in the best song on the album, followed by "You Are Alive When They Start To Eat You", which in it's Cult Of Luna-likeness is the only track to touch on feelings of despondency and moody reflection, sentiments one could reasonably assume have been aimed for across the board in an album such a this.

We on Rockfreaks.net define a 4/10 as "an album that is technically and musically okay but boring to listen to". In trying to avoid being unjustly ruthless to an album which isn't badly produced nor is made with heinous, monetary intentions, I think to myself if AFA have done any more than that, but alas, they haven't. The simplicity of the bulk of the riffs and the reliance on beatdowns for half the album kill that prospect, leaving the foot-stomping "A Hero Complex" to pick up the pieces and this bonus half-point.

Originally written for Rockfreaks.net

REVIEW ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT WWW.TEETHOFTHEDIVINE.COM BY ERIK THOMAS

Man oh man, this some heavy shit.

Sitting squarely in the middle of the sludge genre, California’s Armed For Apocalypse, (featuring Cayle Hunter of Will Haven and The Abominable Iron Sloth) cull heavily from Crowbar and the expected gamut of down tempo, earthy, lumbering sludge bands like The Abominable Iron Sloth (duh), Blessing the Hogs, Blutch, Beaten Back to Pure, Black Cobra and such, but rather than a backbone of swampy, whiskey driven stupor, Armed For Apocalypse add a truly menacing sense of dread and almost death/doom metal heft and foreboding to their sound.

No surly, slurring interludes, just sheer punishing heft delivered with cavernous guitars and vocals that range from pained screams to demonic death metal roars and bellows. Alternating between caustic, up tempo riffs and some truly monolithic rumbling segments, Defeat is a merciless, beat-down, landslide of a record. From the cataclysmic climax of opener “We Fell From The Bottom”, monstrous lurch of “The Demon Who Makes Trophies Of Men”, utter rumble fest that opens “Fists of God”, as well as the more obviously Crowbar inspired and southern tinged “Hero Complex” and “A Collapse” to the Defeat is just downright nasty heavy, with the start and finish penultimate track “You Are Alive When they Start to Eat You” being the devastating epoch. The album closes out with a fittingly beefed up cover of Down’s “Temptations Wings” from the seminal NOLA album.

I kept trying to flesh this review out, but the fact is, this is about as a direct, no nonsense assault on your ears as there is, and thusly no real need to try and doctor this review up. Buy it, crank it up, and watch CNN report more earthquakes in your area.

Can you believe it? I've seen this band marked as "sludge" metal, but the only thing that sludges itself across the debut album of USA's "Armed for Apocalypse" are the meta-breakdowns that seemingly tow themselves to endless loops, manifesting themselves to an incredibly nerve-shattering pattern of dullness and mediocrity. Apparently, with the further development (or better yet: degeneration) of Metal in general to the -core scene, bands are further experimenting on how to ruin a certain sub genre and infuse it with metalcore, to sound both trendy and interesting. Well here is the newest product: sludge metal + metalcore. Fantastic. Enjoy the pain!

As ridiculous as it is boring and uninspired, "Armed for Apocalypse" not only sound very tough and intimidating, but also very serious. They don't waste any time with getting to "business" and immediately deliver note after note of slam and jam riffing, with their bombastic drum assaults. That, basically, is their formula, namely superficial and generic boom boom music that is so typical for the metalcore scene. Add some teenage-sounding wailing about something extremely "tough", accompanied by cookie monster runts and you're nearly done with your half-assed, half-baked newcomer crap. Don't forget the lame "groovy" riffing and there you have it: a product of new music, that has been done decades ago by the real masters of innovative music, be it in Gothenburg, the UK or the US.

Every song on this album, while not being 1:1 identical to each other, manages to sound the same, in a very uninteresting and unimaginably anticlimatic way. There is no substance whatsoever in the songs, in other words: the songs sound like a mix between some guitar jibbering and weak vocals. There are a lot of parts that can be viewed as collateral to the listening experience, if not then even repetitive. If you like the new sh*t! in form of the whole trendy -core stuff, then this may be the album for you. If you dislike the new direction of metal music in general, stay away from this CD.

(metal-observer.com 5.10.09)