Happy Hour

Given my deductive nature, I tend to thumb through the liner notes of an album prior to listening to it, to the end of predicting what kind of music it will be. This time around, I wasn't hopeful. The booklet, or rather, the rectangular piece of paper folded in half, gave way to three separate photographs of a scrawny man in a gas mask doing what I can only describe as flexing. Making it worse, this man has decided to adorn himself to the tune of a Waking the Cadaver T-shirt. Great. A one man band whose sole member has consciously elected the way of posing like "Macho Man" Randy Savage while ensconced in a 100% cotton advertisement pertinent to the most loathsome group since brokeNCYDE for his band portrait. Now, the gas mask I get (Taiwan... gas mask... it's fairly obvious), but the rest is excessively ridiculous. Or perhaps I'm not giving Brutal Gut Pot Loving Pig Squealer enough credit. If his chosen vocal style is indeed a pun based on the swine flu, he'd be quite the clever motherhumper, admittedly. But that's neither here nor there. Music must take precedence over image, regardless of its inherent stupidity.

Well, actually, the music is stupid just the same. It's like Waking the Cadaver with lower production values, but much, much more talent in the vocal department. It's no secret that Don Campan couldn't growl his way out of the female hygiene aisle in a convenience store, but I always felt that with a decent singer, Waking the Cadaver could be a passable slam band. My suspicions have been confirmed. I dig the vocals. Larry (is this your homework, Larry?) has himself a nice, low, "zombie" growl that sounds reminiscent of Impetigo. Supplement that with his nauseating boar roars and you've got a straight up draft prospect.

Simplicity is God here. Larry's guitar riffs consist of incoherent chugs, unnecessary pinch harmonics, and slams that make Schwarzenegger movies seem philosophical in comparison. It's almost comical just how unintelligent this music is. Quite frankly, it sucks dick. But who says having your dick sucked isn't fun, y'know what I'm sayin'? Just because it takes no talent (we're talking a toothy blowjob here, not Heather Brooke) doesn't automatically mean it's not enjoyable. I don't know what else to say. Larry may or may not have recorded a bass track for this album. The only evidence that supports the existence of a bass guitar on Happy Hour is its portly low end. I'll take it. The computerized drummer goes to show that, while a drum machine doesn't have to eat or sleep, doesn't offer derisive opinions, doesn't get a cut of the royalty check, doesn't fuck your wife, whatever, there's no way to fully and completely replace a human drummer. The drumming gets the job done, but similar to the way a pair of fake tits does: they look nice, but it's just not the same.

Overall, Happy Hour is a lot of fun, but that's also its downfall. The song titles are impossible for me to get past. "Your Cock is Stuck Inside a Bong", "Batman is a Little Bitch", "Rolling a Joint with your Foreskin"... no, these are unacceptable. Even Waking the Cadaver takes titularity seriously. I've gotta draw the line somewhere. The samples are fortunately used in small doses, but they're more miss than hit. They're either irrevocably imature, or simply irrelevant. Although I must admit, "My First Time Really Hurts" has a sample that actually made me physically laugh, a rarity considering my contempt for samples. It's Tom Hanks from Cast Away, giving his most searing performance yet as a volleyball's lover.

This is bad music, but it's bad music the same way Army of Darkness is a bad movie. Happy Hour is drenched in Karo syrup, ridden with absurd one liners, inexcusably cheesy, and altogether unrealistic. It's campy death metal, if you will. It's Bruce Campbell death metal, and this is one hell of a loud boomstick. Check it out if you dare.

I'm not normally the sort to resort to cheap bashing reviews; going on about how crap deathcore is is extremely old news- there's no horse left to flog. Yes, we know it's crap and a nuisance upon humanity, but so are, say, wasps and prickles; and whinging about them all the time would just be silly.

However, Heathen Harvest have given me this album to review, so there you go. Let's get this over with, then; this is pretty much the worst thing you've ever heard, anywhere. Brutal death + Grind is a dicey genre at the best of times (I did rather like Wormed, though); and when the whole thing is overrun with a ton of deathcore influences and heaps of pig squeals you know you're in for a rather painful listening experience. It's somewhat amusing- but mostly sad- that the best parts here are actually the breakdown sections; at least then it's sort of catchy and groovy (I was sort of hoping this would be a groovy goregrind release based on the cover; disappointment resulted).

For the most part though this flies along in a really annoying, completely forgettable mess. Annoying and constant pig squeals, riffs that tend towards one chord more often then not (you know it's a bad thing when you perk up to a riff that clearly uses a few different notes), a really irritating production that manages to be thin as hell but still really cluttered. The more chaotic parts are sort of like Last Days of Humanity but minus that genuinely sinister vibe LDoH have; and when it slows it down it's very reminiscent of Waking the Cadaver but minus that group's sense of slapstick fun. And really, saying "it's like LDoH/WtC but a lot worse" is pretty much the worst insult you can give to a band, short of comparing it to Korpiklaani or Nightwish.

(originally written for www.heathenharvest.com)