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Where to begin with this stinking piece of sewage...

I love death metal for the aggression and the otherwordly atmosphere, or just the sheer brutality of it, and grindcore is essentially the musical essence of anger – how can you not like that at least a little? Benighted is labelled as brutal death metal/grindcore on the site and has been reviewed thus far only very, very positively. A well executed mixture of grind and death that is not analogous to deathgrind (and especially not deathcore) is a great point of interest for me, so obviously with such exceedingly positive reviews and the interesting label itself the band was almost crying out to be given a listen. So I did.

Since Enmity, this has probably been the worst experience I've had with death metal altogether. At first listen, I didn't expect this to suck so much. The less-than thirty seconds long intro song of the album, ”Complete Exsanguination”, sounds quite promising, production aside, which is painstakingly lifeless and completely without depth. It's a heavily punk-tinged little song with bursts of sheer grinding. That's where all quality ends though – into a tiny hint of what could be talent. The following song, ”Slut”, starts off with the most mediocre, deathcore-esque ”death metal” tripe you can imagine. Paper-thin sounding vocals that are not growls nor screams, intonated in that fast, rhythmical way that screams deathcore. Atonal, fast, downtuned riffs without the slightest ability to captivate; with absolutely no way for the listener to relate. It only sounds nasty for the sake of it, and I assume young scene kids go crazy over music that they think is so brutal that they can't tolerate it. However, this isn't brutal at all. It's vague and lifeless, and it's played as if by a machine. With the pseudo brutal riffs, annoying abrupt breakdowns and the vocalists versatile abilities at making the most deathcorey brees and squeels, not to mention the low pig-like noises, it's as if the music was designed to create as much irritation in the listener as possible.

”Grind Wit” is a metalcore masqueraded as brutal death metal. In the very beginning the vocalist showcases three different ways to say bree, and the band celebrates this by playing more deathcore riffs to go with the vocals. The drummer either blasts very fast or plays what could be drum fills in the end of a blasted section in every bar. At one point, the guitar becomes a rhythm instrument, and the vocalists lapses into a rapped passage in French. Can it get any worse? It's amazing that this is labelled as brutal death metal/grindcore, when this is infact extreme metalcore, or melodic deathcore. Needless to say, I suppose, this album has a production befitting of its true content. The guitar sound brings to mind Slaughter Of The Soul and several modern melodeath albums. It isn't a bad sound as such, but it lacks the power that a death metal record certainly would need, and the riffs played here manage bring out the most annoying characteristics of the guitar tone - a thick artificial transistor amp sound. The drum sounds are the weakest link of the production. A clicky-sounding bassdrum, a too tight sounding snare and quiet, weak cymbals. The drumset completely lacks all power, and while the drumming is extremely skillfully done, it could aswell be a machine, since you can't tell if any feeling at all was put into playing those parts.

The band seems to have attempted to create a hybrid between melodic death metal à la Slaughter of the Soul and Heartwork, death metal like Cryptopsy and especially modern brutal death metal, and then somehow bring into the game Trivium influences and get away with it withotu sounding disjointed. ”Forsaken” is such a bad mess of different styles that it's amazing how they ever thought of putting those riffs together. It's not a chaotic mess like many death metal albums are where a riff abruptly changes to another. Here, the whole genre of music changes to another, and there are at worst three completely different styles included into one song, all of which Benighted attempted to play within the frames of brutal death metal. However, the only thing that really reminds of the brutal death metal deception in songs like "Forsaken" is the vocalist, whose wide array of stupid noises is like a parody of brutal death metal vocals, and, of course, the occasional passage of limp, driveling blasting nonsense. It's hilarious to listen to all those burps, brees and high-pitched screams when the music in the background is at times like a second-rate Heartwork ripoff, or at other times atonal pseudo-brutal tripe without atmosphere.

Benighted cannot create any kind of atmosphere if they are unable to narrow their riffing style down to things that genuinely hybridise well. There are some de facto good riffs on the album, and the song ”Pledge Of Retaliation” is not really bad as a song. In this incarnation, it's a ruined one of course, but it at least demonstrates that the band is not entirely without talent. In that song, the grindcore aesthetic works delightfully well interwoven with the melodic, heavy riffing. The title track is not a bad song as such either, although an uninspired Slaughter of the Soul ripoff it undeniably is, and it's certainly not amazing enough to be worth listening to despite the idiotic breakdowns. If one more good thing must be said, there are certainly highly original drum beats at times, which halfway balances out all the shitty and boring ones that this album is full of.

Yes, there is always some reason behind the renown. Nothing that warrants any of the excessive hype, however. Songs like ”The Underneath” once again prove that the slightly stronger mid-late part of the album meant nothing, and that the album is really quite shitty. If metalcore influences, mid 90s melodic death metal inspired by Swedish death metal and deathcore vocals stereotypical to the point of being an effective parody appeal to you, you should probably check this out. However, if your aesthetics suggest that Immolation is of greater quality than Waking The Cadaver, or that None So Vile is a better Cryptopsy album than The Unspoken King, leave this piece of shit alone, because it's unlikely you'll find anything worth listening to here, for this is some of the most rancid, putrid core wiggery ever to be masqueraded as death metal.