Alright, listen to me you fucking Swampsong loving shitlickers: This is just a fucking take on the already taken path of early Fear Factory, but without any of the Nancyboy clean vocals or funky breakdowns. Just machinelike rhythms and thick guitar work. And that means it’s better than what you like. I don’t care if you like THIS, it’s still better.
All this band wishes to do is make heavy metal. I assume they heard a couple FF discs and decided that’s how they were going to go about it. Here is to them. It works. It’s not going to get a fucking 666, but it’s going to be recommended to anyone who isn’t jonesing to get in touch with the little Mozart they mistakenly assume is running around in them, which is fine by me because those people need to be hit in the face with everything.
Not that this is a simple play-it-like-they-did remake of Demanufacture, really. It hops from the FFing to some nifty death and roll and even a little Napalm Deathic riffage now and then. It’s a combo that makes sense and Total Devastation, despite the corny name, play it with passion and precision. The vocals are all death, which keeps things feeling earthy and violent. The drums sound like drums instead of mechanical plastic monkeys on a power surge, and the keys or programming are mainly understated. The tempos shift from chugging headbangers to nearly brutal blasts, and when the band wants to sound epic they do a good job of pulling it off.
The production is damn near perfect. Everything melts together like a single organism and the amount of heavy is about perfect for people who actually value that kind of thing. The cd remains fresh for the entire 45 minutes, pummel after pummel, beating upon beating. And even the relative changeups like “Production Peak” come across like wolves circling the kill instead of hand holding moments for lovers and friends.
Bottom Line: Buy this, enjoy it, let it fuck with you and take a shit on your Norsecore and Melodeath CDs and act like a fucking metalhead, Shirley.
