Originally written by Jordan Campbell
Well, shit. I don’t know about you, but nothing –and I mean nothing— gets me straight stoked to hear a one-man, amateur death/grind album than a 64-second intro that consists of nothing but fucking noise. Yeah, some lame-ass ambient buzzing is an ideal device to get those I-wanna-rock-my-ass-off juices flowing, is it not?
Sarcasm and rhetoric aside, this crap really, really needs to stop. Every metal band and their skank-ass sister seems to think that introductory “songs” are an effective, even required tool to set a tone for an album, but here’s the honest truth about the matter: 98% of the time, they SUCK. This has always been the case, and it’s not going to change. So, can we finally pull the plug on this trend and just get to the damn riffs already?
…actually, I could cut the crap myself and just ‘get to the damn review already’; but like the bands that employ that tired-ass tactic, I’m trying to fill some space.
Typical of fledgling bands, Human Taxidermy throws their best song into the album’s pole postition (after the crappy, worthless, utterly banal intro track, of course), smacking you over the head with the promise of semi-coolness before you can adjust your jockstrap. “Shapelessness” is built around a super-thick, mid-90’s, Skinlab/Fear Factory/Machine Head-type riff. Okay, cool. We’ve just established that the most distinctive, memorable riff on the album harkens back to a style that was popular –and got played out very, very, quickly– over ten years ago. But, screw it, eh? If it kicks, it kicks, and the furious blasting that accompanies it certainly kicks. Dude gave himself a fat, powerful sound on this one, and it suits the highly rhythmic tunes to a T. Unfortunately, none these rhythms or riffs are particularly novel, and the underlying industial flourishes sound particularly stale. Nothing manages to stand out until “The Glorious Battle Between the Ancient Warriors of Baralnazog” three tracks later, which is a weird-ass digression into generic clubthump techno, with a sample of the word ‘genitals’ repeated ad nauseum. Oh my god…HILARIOUS. Genitals! Hahahaha….! Genitals.
Seriously, what the fuck. Then after that weird little nugget o’ retardation, it’s back to the stone-faced genero-stomp on “Sick Lick Kill” and “Engineering Annihilation”, before closing with an earnest ballad that shows potential, but simply cannot be taken seriously after the bouncing genital idiocy. The brief exercise that is The Distinction of Extinction is well-played, well-packaged, but excruciatingly unimpressive. The scattershot ideas and unfocused heaviness found herein will have all the appeal of a stuffed muskrat to all but those within the artist’s inner circle.
And the band name is crap.
