In the Face of the Enemy

If you've never heard Disarray...well you haven't missed out on much. Disarray manages to take a thrash influenced style of riffs and place it with a very mediocre Phil Anselmo type vocals. Yeah Disarray sounds a lot like Pantera, at least in my opinion.

In the Face of the Enemy is really not a bad album. The drums are pretty cool on this album, playing a lot of off beats and syncopated rhythms. It is like you never know what he is going to do...and then bam! here comes this weird, but interesting, drum fill. The riffs are pretty good, mostly sounding thrashy, but some riffs are very Patneraish. Most of the riffs are recycled, or at least none really stand out as on their own. Productions is good, but other than that this album has nothing that stands out.

The thing that draws negativity towards this album is the singing. I have heard worse, but this is really up there. It is like a mix between James Hetfield and Phil Anselmo -I guess that is where their southern influence comes from. His voice just becomes really annoying after the first couple of lines. There are a couple of cool songs worth mentioning, like Voice of Reason, Burned Soul, and This World. Other than that, it is just a bunch of recycled fillers. If you like Pantera's later music, then you will definitely appreciate this album. If you don't like Pantera and other bands like this...well then stay away.

Disarray has got to be one of the most under appreciated bands I have ever come across. In today's metal scene a lot of bands seem to concentrate on adding a bleak atmosphere to the heavy metal formula and quite often atmospherics seem to overtake sheer power (not that this is a bad thing), however Disarray don't compromise themselves at all, riff after riff of great metal. Power over atmosphere.

What we have here is a hybrid of say Justice-era Metallica, some of the "half thrash" (to borrow a term from Boris) of Pantera, and the plain groove style riffing of the likes of Black Sabbath and Down, all with a very slight crossover influence, with some of the songs having a slight punky charm to them in the way DRI did at times. I guess the closest album to compare this to is Corrosion of Conformity's "Blind" but even that is still quite far out.

The vocals are fantastic, some of the best I've heard. Aggressive and rough, but by no means "death" at all. The drums pound along at a middle pace, and set the tempo for some AWESOME mid paced breakdown riffing (see Voice of Reason, Neverending Quest For Revenge). Guitar solos are present here but not on every song, but to be honest not every song needs the guitar solos, the riffs alone are enough to get the band through.

Highlights include Voice of Reason, To This Day and the fantastic acoustic track Life is Gone. Chuck Bonnett pours his heart out in this very "southern" sounding song, fantastic.

Overall this album is INCREDIBLY underappreciated, an absolute gem. I can only hope for more of this type of stuff from the band in the future.