Serial Urbicide

Where can I even begin with this abomination? Serial Urbicide is the ultimate album for fans of "buttslam," crap pioneered by Abominable Putridity and other modern groups; it's packed with sterile production, robo-drums, a flat pingy snare, and those god-forsaken bass drops that everyone adores for some reason. This is worthless garbage, and I wish people wouldn't listen to it.

My explanations above aren't sufficient enough to make a valid case for why this album blows balls and reflects the genre's flaws today. Unfortunately, I had to sit through this headache-inducing wall of sound (not in a good way) to fairly judge the songwriting and riffs, of which there are a few nice ones here and there, so this review will begin there.

The issues in Serial Urbicide are not necessarily in the composition, but rather in how the songs sound. The songwriting is very conventional, with typical blast portions interlaced with groove-ladened tremolo riffage, followed by slower slams and "chug-chug" riffs. Bog standard stuff, which is fine, until your ears are assaulted by triggered-to-hell drums and a staticy, "huge" guitar tone that attempts to be "brutal" but comes off as extremely tryhard. Each slam is ruined by bass drops ala dubstep that completely takes you out of the immersion, which you'd struggle to find in the first place. Why bass drops? It doesn't make it heavier, it does the opposite.

The "vocals" are my next gripe. To clarify, I adore Wayne Knupp's (RIP) "pig vomit" vocals from early Devourment and Matt Duncan's (RIP) work from Afterbirth - that style in general. These vocals, on the other hand, are your typical "sink drain" vocals with no substance or changeups. The vocalist sounds the same on every fucking song, It's not even an exaggeration. I'm well aware that it takes skill to pull off vocals like these, but the execution just lacks and becomes highly repetitious - and as I previously indicated, I love vocals like this for the most part.

I'd like to embrace new slam/BDM, but travesties like this will keep me away from modern bands that don't pay homage to the pioneers. To summarize, the production is sterile, the guitars are enormous and boring, the drums are EXTREMELY robotic and triggered to hell and back, there's no bass in the mix (no need for bass with guitars like this), the vocals are shit, and the bass drops give you second-hand embarrassment. This album is literally everything wrong with the genre for the past decade+.

Now that I'm finally finished talking about this sorry excuse for an album, I implore you to listen to real slam/BDM like Afterbirth, or any modern band that brings back the classic sound - or, at the very least, has natural production that utterly crushes the garbage heard on Serial Urbicide. Guys like Infertile Surrogacy, Grave Syndrome, and Regurgitated Entrails will always do it significantly better than flaming horse dung like this.