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Weird but not 'good' - 43%
Apparently some time in the '90s, some members of Nav' and Old Wainds decided what they really needed to do was form a death metal side project that would go nowhere and be known by no one, and so we have Full Decay, one of the most overlooked bands in Russia featuring members of the Slavic black metal scene. I have no idea what motivated the project's creation- it just released a demo and a full-length before promptly imploding, leaving only this compilation for anyone to remember it by. And honestly, it's not really remarkable stuff- pretty appropriate given its obscurity. If anything, this is just a curiosity piece for people who want to talk about who's in it more than what's on the disc.
This is a compilation of the band's whole discography, which is simply a demo and a single full-length, neither of which anyone seems to hand except for via this compilation. Full Decay is a pretty straightforward, somewhat brutal death metal band that comes off as a combination of early Dying Fetus and mid-era Cannibal Corpse, with a lot of the thrashy or brooding passages of the latter with a mechanical, violent sense of rhythm provided by the former. The riffs are mostly tremolo-based, and there's not a whole lot of groove despite the pretty considerable thrash influence that defines this release. Instead, what you get is a lot of blast beats and needling solos amidst mostly atonal, mildly technical riffs that just aren't that interesting for the most part.
The coolest moments on this CD are when the band somehow reincorporates the Slavic black feel into death metal. You'll occasionally get a moment like on 'Лилит (Ритуал Похоти)' where the atonal riffs drop out and a stream of tense, folk-infused tremolo riffs will come in- they're somewhat jarring and clearly rather unrelated to the music around them, but the way the band can reincorporate this melodic style of Slavic songwriting back into this primarily atonal style of music is really fantastic- it's just a pity they didn't use it more. These moments are by far the most compelling, and the rest of the CD is just sort of middling. Big damage is done through the production, which is bad on the demo and not much better on the full-length: digital, smothered, and claustrophobic, it doesn't do much to inspire confidence in the listener, nor do the obviously programmed drums on the full-length. Not that I think this would really be a great deal more interesting with a real drummer, but the fact stands.
I get the point in presenting this music in chronological order, but it should probably have been reversed here. To get to the full-length (which is what most people want to hear), you have to slog through a lengthy, poorly produced demo to get to the slightly less poorly produced album, and it becomes irritating. But then again, that's a metaphor for the whole album: slogging through a bunch of mostly boring, unpleasant stuff to get to a minor glimmer of creativity and fun. Frankly, it's probably not worth investing that much time into this sort of thing.
