Pieces of Nothing

*listens* Oh. No wonder this one escaped my memory. I should stop buying all this stuff just because it has a price tag with only cents printed on it, it's not like "oooooh Bloodie, your collection is SOOOO BIIIIIG! Tee-hee!" It's more of a puzzled kind of look I tend to get when I have friends visiting - these days a big collection of *physical* CDs is considered nerdy and generally held in the same regard as a big collection of Pokémon cards. Hmpf.

Death metal. Year 2000. Pavement records. Not exactly off to a great start, are we? It has the feel of an old-school American DM fare at a quick glance, but soon you realize it's like such a group PLAYING something else than DM most of the time, if that makes sense. For instance, a good deal modern hardcore of the rollercoaster-of-emotions variety is apparent, juxtaposed with what is basically a straight-ahead heavy metal sound that makes no sense to be experienced with a production job like this (like Morbid Angel's Angel of Disease - on Covenant, not the demo - except Deep's songwriting is sucky to boot). Highly melodic, "Maiden-harmonized" guitar work everywhere as well, almost like Gothencore a couple years before everyone else started playing it? Nah, but think a much, much less complex and yet less sense-making Vehemence, but even more removed from traditional Death Metal values. But that's certainly a stretch comparison, at the end of the day it's a cacophony of random influences that doesn't really sound like anything else I've heard. Which of course makes sense, I mean who would want their band to sound like this?

I can't make any sense out of any of this, and probably need assistance from Encyclopaedia Metallum's resident DM nestors to get perspective, help me figure out what on Earth the thought process and references behind this was! "In Tears of Depravity" has cool epic tremolo riffage, good songwriting and is the best song despite being over seven minutes long. Should make it fall flat on its ass but it doesn't, it actually flows quite well between its many parts, despite also being a bit jumpy and schizophrenic. "Ash and Dust" has a good and unique opening riff if nothing else and is great heavy metal no matter the genre (again, which one it belongs to is up in the air half the time on this album). But then, that completely stock standard breakdown in "Point" where it does not belong, why why? The production is awful; it doesn't groove, or have intensity, or brutality or any "definition" I can think of that they were shooting for...look, that's Logan Mader credited for it! He was kicked out of Machine Head for being too high on meths (I think), shame he had to attend his rehab appointment the very same afternoon that this album was recorded and (not) mixed. That's gotta be what went down, I mean someone can't have actually produced this one, right? Yes, a victim of Metal's dark years that we have here: yeah there were your Gateways to Annihilation and whatnot, but horrible albums were more abundant than ever (relatively to the good ones), and death metal for one anyway was certainly in better shape before and after this.

Shoddily written and incoherent! Production is bad and uneven. The album leaves me baffled and confused. Okay maybe that's the whole point of some music, but my point is that I don't wan't to play it again.