Sick Lust for Revenge

There's way too many bouncy, happy thrash riffs for a band called Bound In Human Flesh on this album. Stuff that sounds like it comes out of the Megadeth back catalog just doesn't seem appropriate for an album called 'Sick Lust For Revenge'. Now if it were just that it would be one thing but the rest of the album is pretty lame too so I don't feel bad castigating it for its happy bouncy sound.

The problems with this album are pretty meta things, and not an issue of lack of creativity, production quality, or professionalism. Hell, an overdose of the latter might be the problem. Well, there's a few more obvious things first: the drum machine, for one, either needs to be revised or needs to go, because the samples are simply too fake and obnoxious to work for music this fast. The crash cymbals in particular are painfully digital, and given the crash flurries Jamie Vautour apparently loves to use, this is a serious problem. The rest of the production is similarly digital and irritating, in fact, with a very synthesized-sounding guitar presence and overly compressed, tinny vocals. Nothing appears to have any space, as though the band was trying to fit the sound of the album into a tin can.

Beyond that, though, there's not a whole lot of spirit to these songs. Bound In Human Flesh plays a pretty scattered combination of death, black, and thrash metal, but instead of melding into something interesting, all the different elements just dilute each other, making it seem like a very watered down version of generic extreme metal. The riffs are all 'extreme metal riffs', but there's nothing to them, really: they're just tremolo or thrashy, palm-muted numbers that are played very quickly but don't seem to really progress the songs in a meaningful way. The ranting goblin babble vocals are harsh but not particularly impassioned, and overall I don't get the sense that these songs are really here to do anything other than hang around like a fart in an elevator for a few minutes before the band gets bored and starts writing a new one.

The boredom extends to the audience: there's very little here to sink one's teeth into. While there's a ton of riffs on every song, they're all pretty boring, lifeless riffs, and the weird, goofy bounciness to everything (aided by the bloopy bass sound) just makes it that much more incongruous with itself. All the songs basically adhere to the same general ideas and there's just not enough raw content for the listener to really get enthused about. The music lacks personality, despite all the different things going on, which is a problem that can only really be solved by overhauling the band's songwriting methodology.

So yeah, this kind of sucks, but not in a malicious way; just in a half-hearted, lifeless way that might actually be worse than being genuinely offensive. I have no idea where this band went after this release; maybe they improved with the latest full-length, but regardless I recommend you check that one out before this, because I can only see this disappointing nearly everyone into extreme metal.

BOUND IN HUMAN FLESH started as a one man Black Death Metal project in Saint John, NB Canada, with Jamie Vautour as the sole member, in 1998. He recorded a self titled 4 song demo with Geoff Martin on vocals in 2001, but replaced him in 2002 with Rick Daigle for the recording of "Sick Lust For Revenge", which was released in early 2005 on Baphomet Records.

Daigle's vocals are true to his Black Metal roots keeping BOUND IN HUMAN FLESH within the genre, but the guitars are crossing the boundaries into speedy death. The use of drum programming also provides a Ministry type assault of melodic industrial speedmetal. The opening, "Becoming The Serpent", certainly would make Al Jorgensen get up and thrash and "Justified Terrorist" is a good mix of speed death/metal and pure black. "Bound In Human Flesh" is blazing fast but with melody and gets within the area of a KMFDM sound. Good, fast and tight. "Decapitate" is more melodic speed with awesome, brutal Black Metal vocals. "The Apocalypse", "Dark One", "Covered In Blood" and "Feel The Pain Of Death" are all a perfect mix of heavy, speedy, melodic death guitars and brutal Black vocals. "Horror" is more towards some good Canadian Black Metal and they finally grind it down a bit with "Possessed by Psychopaths". After such an awesome mix of metal styles coming together for this heavy speed attack, they end this all with an acoustic "Epidermologue" that just makes for a kind of twisted end to the onslaught.

If you never thought Black Metal, Death Metal and drum programming could make such a good mix, then pick this up and think again. It's awesome.