World of Lies

The production on this is annoying for weird reasons, the biggest one being the constant squeaking of hand on guitar strings which you would think would have been removed through basic noise removal utilities. I swear to god, it's constant; once you hear it you can never unhear it. It doesn't make the music warmer, it just makes it irritating and detracts from already pretty fucking lukewarm songwriting. The overall mixing and mastering is fine but god, that one element just drives me nuts.

Granted it's not that big an issue since I can rarely get more than four tracks into it before turning it off. It's not excruciating; there's just so little going on here that I can't find a reason to listen to it. Coming off the heels of the band's best work, 'Dissimulate', 'World Of Lies' is really weirdly disappointing; it's like the band, after recording 'Dissimulate', set out to make an album full of the tracks that weren't good enough to be featured on that album. Essentially every track on this album is extremely mediocre and it seems to be the sound of a band desperately searching for some direction to go in after they surprised even themselves with the previous record.

Around 'Dissimulate', The Berzerker's style became pretty entrenched: drum machine provided rhythm (the real drum experiment on 'Dissimulate' has not been repeated since) with very electronic-oriented samples, fairly melodic riffs (which I recently came to realize owe a huge amount to early Centinex, like bordering on full-fledged tribute sometimes) mixed with more abrupt, grinding ones, and a high/low vocal attack that's within the Carcass mold. None of this is bad but I can't help but think that the establishment of a more defined style actually harmed the band; where's the weird, slow burning tracks of previous releases, the more convoluted programming, the sheer weirdness of the debut? Apart from the ill-advised outro track, the album is essentially a continuous festival of double bass and tremolo riffs.

There's a lack of versatility to the music; some of the riffs are repeated too much and are very static in their use, telegraphing changes in song structure that would have been surprising with a more organic form of writing. Everything on this feels much simpler and more clear-cut than the previous releases by the band; this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in a band so defined by its supposed extremity, shouldn't we expect something a little more... extreme? Take, for instance, the extremely awkward opening riff on the album's 'single' 'All About You': the riff appears, and the form in which it appears is the only way it can work. I'm pretty sure that despite 5 musicians being featured on this album, Kenny really ran things, and it falls prey to the same issues that plague so many one-man projects: static song structures and a lack of overall vision beyond how to get to the next riff.

This is not terrible but it is most certainly on the lower end of The Berzerker's catalog. 'Dissimulate' is, of course, the more important album, so you should get that first, but if you're simply in love with the overall sound of this band I guess there's no problem with getting this one too. To the more discerning, though, this is a pass.

Being a pretty big fan of the Berzerker, and being a big fan especially of Dissimulate, my expectations were farely high for thier follow up entitled "World of Lies". Before listening to this album I wasnt sure what to expect with the loss of their human drummer from Dissimulate that added so much more to that album than the drum machine on their s/t effort. Knowing that throughout World of Lies that the great drumming is being done by a machine and not a human is abit of a downer in my eyes but not as much as I would have expected. The drumming however, is more varied than that of the drumming on previous albums in which they played at break neck speeds for virtually the entire album. But still, it doesn’t help that the drumming is done by a machine. I feel that it takes away from the music, the machine cant quite replicate what the emotion and feeling that the human drummer was able to convey on Dissimulate. This is only a slight set back in my mind though. What I'm getting at is that the music of World of Lies is more varied than that of their previous efforts. Dissimulate is of course known for the speed and brutality that it shows. World of Lies on the other hand, while still incorporating much of the same guitar/bass work and drumming that made Dissimulate a hit among brutal death/grind fans also has much slower, more sinister sounding riffs that offer a new experience to fans of The Berzerker. And by sinister, I'm even talking about riffs that are used that are more reminiscent to that of something you might hear in Black Metal. (see: As The World Waits, opening riff) With the song writing further improved and a further emphasis being put on changing up their typical song structure, The Berzerker have created an album that would be a great introduction to the band, as I see as being a much more accessible album to your everyday, typical fan of Death metal. The vocals on this album are pretty much the same style of Vocals that fans of the Berzerker are accustomed to and aren’t really any different than anything they have done before. The vocals and the use of sound samples throughout the album are virtually the only thing that remains the same when compared to their previous albums.

Perhaps one of the greatest changes that you will see on this album is the rather long(20 min) outro track "Farewell" which is slow, and very somber sounding and leaves a lasting impression on the album as a whole and is sure to be an instrumental that will be remembered in the realm of Death Metal. The only down side of this album for me was that it didn’t quite seem to bring the same punch that Dissimulate did on the first several listens. While perhaps being a better album musically, World of Lies lacks some of the memorable riffs that are quite frequent through out Dissimulate. But don’t let this one somewhat bad quality of the album stop you from checking it out, it is still a very much worth a listen for any fan of Death metal and for fans of The Berzerker as well. And if you weren’t impressed with Dissimulate, I would still recommend this album because it is an album that grow on you, that you will find yourself liking more and more each and every listen. Something that cant necessarily be said about Dissimulate. “ World of Lies” is yet another good, solid effort from the from the Aussies!