Originally written by Jordan Campbell
A death metal band on Victory Records already has built-in credibility issues; throw in a pink logo and a healthy swoopy-haircut-thing ratio, and you’ve got a band guaranteed to be scorned by anyone old enough to possess a driver’s license. Let’s take a detour and hypothesize on the band’s origin, shall we?
Perched upon a picnic table at a podunk Dairy Queen, a young scenester jerks an earbud from his left ear as a similiarly-dressed peer strolls by him. He offers a nonchalant, “What up, dude,” in his direction.
The passing kid slows his stride and fires back, “What up.”
“That’s a sweet Every Time I Die shirt, man,” the scenekid remarks.
“Thanks,” says the passerby, as he grinds to a halt. “I like how it accentuates my total lack of muscle tone. That’s a cool backwards trucker hat you’ve got yourself, dude. How’d you get the brim so straight?”
“Oh, dude, I totally planted it under my Crate practice amp for, like, 3 days.”
The excitement in the other kid’s voice is palpable. “Dude, you play? Rad! We should jam sometime. I want get down with something really, really heavy.”
“Totally,” the DQ devotee drawls. “What bands are you into, man?”
“Mostly the ones with three-word band names…and splattery logos.”
Pulling out his other earbud and leaping off the table, his new friend yelps, “Righteous! Me too! Let’s fuckin’ do this, dude! Let’s start a band!”
“Fuck yeah! But first things first: should we sound exactly like Whitechapel…or exactly like The Black Dahlia Murder?”
You won’t need to purchase the upcoming Choose Your Own Adventure book “Getting Signed To Victory Records” to find out which path Wretched chose — a cursory listen to this already-stale debut record will confirm that the band chose the latter option. But, casting the band in such a narrow light would be doing them a great disservice. In the interest of fairness, it must be noted that they borrow quite liberally from All Shall Perish as well.
Basically, that’s all you need to know. There’s scarcely an original bone in this skinny-ass body. Whether we’re talking about the band’s name itself, the hackish song titles (“Fetal Consumption,” “Mephistos Will,” “Everlasting Damnation”), or the way they intercut melodeath gallop with thunka-thunk palm-muting, The Exodus of Autonomy is about as uninteresting, nondescript, and sterile as could be imagined. Only the instrumental title track — with its wacky salsa break and infectious melody — manages to avoid sounding like a cheesedick retread of every metal cliche that has been collected over the last 5 years.
Ask yourself a question: What would Paul Baloff do with this record? If you don’t know who the fuck Paul Baloff is, but you sure do love super-heavy-awesome bands like The Autumn Offering, Beneath This Guy, and Pastel Cuntrag…by all means, this one’s for you.
