THE RED CHORD

This is a "solid" release, which is to say it is somewhat predictable, pretty formulaic and more or less entirely uninspired.

Consider the origin of the title - according to Wikipedia they were watching a Discovery Channel program about how zippers are made. The last step is for the zipper to be "fed through the teeth machine," which yes I'll admit, is a brutal sentence. But inspiration for an album title? Eh.

The music is as fast, sporadic and mathematically insane as anything they've done, that I'll give them. Especially with only one guitarist in the band (though there are several areas of overdubbing where two distinctly different guitar tracks are evident). But at first listen, I felt like they took a fast and choppy double bass beat, a palm-muted, speed-picked riff and a gutteral scream, then fed it into a formula machine on someone's computer and it spat out twelve different songs, each based on the original double kick/scream/riffage formula.

A few tracks stand out, and on track 9 there's even a cool guitar solo that lasts about 10 seconds and leaves you remembering what melody was after the previous eight tracks of noise.

The one huge bright spot on this album is Demoralizer. My estimation would be that they wrote Demoralizer, realized it was awesome, then wrote eleven other songs to closely resemble it.

Looking at the song lengths, you get an idea of what I'm talking about. Ten of the twelve songs are between 2:01 and 3:15, with the other two coming it at 4:21 and 4:50.

This album really doesn't bring anything fresh in the way of vocals, as I've felt like since their debut, Guy's voice has become increasingly one dimensional. The best thing about the vocals is that it sounds like Guy - a vocalist with one of the most distinctive screams in all of metal. But the worst thing is that virtually every word uttered on this album sounds exactly like the one before it and exactly like the one after it. Where's the shrill shrieking from Fused Together? Where's the nearly subsonic growl from the line "we are all clients" on the title track of that album? Nowhere to be found.

All that said, I'm inclined to say this is the best release since Fused Together, mainly because it sounds the most like The Red Chord.

Clients had some brilliant tracks on it (fixation and black santa), but largely ended up sounding like Hatebreed with blast beats (I believe the reviewer here said "gayteen visions with blast beats").

Prey for Eyes just sounded like a painfully cliche metal album and brought nothing new to the table.

Teeth Machine, on the other hand, has a unique TRC branding on it that has almost zero overlap with other bands, which is why I gave it a somewhat decent originality score, even though in the context of the bands' discography it isn't all that original. But I at least feel like they were true to themselves with this release, and that has to count for something.

If you want a solid metal release that will make you think "fuck, this is tough/insane/brutal," this is the release for you. If you want something that will push your boundaries in a new direction...perhaps look elsewhere.

Label:
Metal Blade

Official Site:
www.theredchord.com

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Posted By:
knifeandfacetragedy