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Broken Hope > Repulsive Conception > Reviews > chaossphere
Broken Hope - Repulsive Conception

The ultimate cure for insomnia - 15%

chaossphere, March 5th, 2015
Written based on this version: 1995, CD, Metal Blade Records

There have been a handful of instances in the history of metal where an otherwise consistently good band somehow produces a completely worthless album, for no apparent reason. "Repulsive Conception" most definitely belongs in this category, along with other abortions such as "St Anger" "Virtual XI", and "Breeding the Spawn" to name a handful.

Half of what makes this one so terrible is the contrast between what it followed and what came after. "The Bowels of Repugnance" is an insane melange of sludge-riddled brutality, gut-churning sound effects and beautiful neo-classical pieces, like a gore-drenched brutal version of "Blessed Are The Sick". "Loathing", the followup to this waste of plastic, is one of the most impressively executed slabs of clinical brutal death metal ever created. Yet somehow "Repulsive Conception" has all the charm of a rotten potato. The production is a complete mess, squashing all the guitars and bass into an inaudible drone and leaving the drums to click away like fingernails on a tabletop. The vocals just kind of gurgle away over the top without ever truly standing out, so you're basically left with 46 minutes of "bluuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp".

To add insult to injury, they somehow felt the need to include a full 15 songs here, including an absurdly pointless Twisted Sister cover that renders the song nearly unrecognizable. Sure there's a couple of interludes, but even those are completely forgettable. Otherwise it's impossible to tell when one song ends and the next starts unless you sit there staring at the CD player's time display.

I suspect there must have been a reason for the uselessness of this album - all sorts of behind the scenes issues can interfere with the creative process, and perhaps the liner notes would give a clue if they weren't printed so small as to be literally unreadable - but they should have just scrapped it and released a 7" of "Pitbull Grin" and the two instrumentals, and then moved on.