Elevation into Disintegration

Hmm... This is both really great and damn annoying. When Ebolie grinds and growls all hell breaks lose. The shit really hits the fan, and sprays you all with this great fucking fecal matter. But why the hell do they have to destroy the massive and powerful deathgrind with such annoying breakdowns? Sure, add a little humour to it, but don't fuck it up!!! Pretty much every song either craps up with a fucking hip hop breakdown shit or an annoying sample. Which is really too bad, 'cause all it does is destroying the otherwise marvellous mangle. The growls are fucking massive, the death metal riffs rips you a new one, and the drums will absolutely mangle you to death. At least half the time, the rest of the time is spent fucking around. The screaming's not as good as the growling, and about half the vocal work's screams - Too bad.

This CD leaves me confused, and not in a good way. Some really cool lyrics, like Queer eye for the metrosexual. But the music in Queer eye... is all fucked up. Amazing grinding, but too much samples and weird breakdowns...

Originally written for http://www.mylastchapter.net

Australia and Tasmania have some damned good bands creeping out of the wild. They backhand your face with Psycroptic, Intense Hammer Rage, Fuck... I'm Dead, and M.S.I. Now comes Ebolie with their new disc “Elevation Into Disintegration.” Fuck analogies and rapier wit, these guys suck real bad. Yeah, they can play instruments and I can not, but I'd rather be all thumbs on a guitar than play like a retard on cocaine.

The music is dull uninspired Death-Grind that may be striving for a failed attempt at comedy like something from S.O.D. The vocals are wimpy hardcore growls combined with a wanna-be Brutal Metal tone. Mostly the vox sounds pussy, which is a compliment when compared to shit like Hatebreed. The guitars are a combination of already heard riffs that every now and again delve into a semblance of something Metallica would have written and put on Load or Reload. Bass and drums compliment each other in that they mindlessly pound away like a frat boy in a homoerotic hazing featuring a paddle.

Probably the most egregious thing about this disc is that they try to add some hints of rap and funk. This not a combination that should ever go with Metal in any of its forms. See everyone sells out in one way or another (If I‘m wrong, burn all your discs, and clothes. Then quit your job to live as an Indian off of either the land or ocean), but the recent trend of bands like Ebolie, Stabwound and Born Headless are nothing more that an attempt to ca$h in on a craze that is pathetically driven by the mainstream media. Probably what makes this reality worse is not how corporate Americana is oozing into the Metal underground. No, what is disdainful is that these bands put this shit out shamelessly knowing that the common angry teen listener is going to think their rap-core-metal-shit is “bad ass.” Stripping away the over analysis, the simple reason for this is that in their petty teen rebellion all the listener wants to hear is something they think is original. But what they are really getting in something like Ebolie is a used up rap/funk concept that was never any good when it hit the airwaves back in the early 1990’s.

What the guys in Ebolie do not understand is that I do not need the music to be unreal heavy. It is not how hard the music is that makes it good listening. It is whether or not it entices the listener with a sound that makes you come back for more after it has been played 10 or 20 times. With Ebolie all the corny sound samples, pathetic rap, stupid funk, and hardcore shouts make this a disc barely hearing once, and I listened to it twice in order to make sure I knew exactly why it is a worthless slab of shit.

This australian band plays Grind/Death with a mish-mash of pretty eclectic influences, part of it is very quirky, kinda like Dying Fetus while the rest is either technical in a Dillinger Escape Plan way or simply barbaric and grindy. These are some very fast-paced, intricate songs; blasting, thrashing but also with quite a few quiet breaks and jazzy arrangements... Plenty of shredding guitar work, funky basslines, tight, fast drumming and even incorporating some groovy techno beats on a couple of songs... Vocal-wise you've got pretty articulate death growls mixed with higher shrieking and screaming. Sound is very clear, with a certain rawness to it, but each instruments sounds nice and detached from each other, you can always hear the cool twirling bass lines very clearly and stuff... The mixing of styles can make the songs seem a little choppy at times though and I wouldn't say any of these songs are truly memorable... The thing is this genre isn't exactly my bag but anyhow these guys are talented, extremely proficient musicians, they're really good at what they do and you can feel the band's enthusiasm through each of their songs... This is really intense stuff, the short humorous samples in between the songs also liven things up in a great way... Lyrics seem to be mostly these guys opinions on society and stuff, but it doesn't seem like they take themselves too seriously! Fans of fast technical grind/death/hardcore should normally dig this...