COVIgnorant

I'm going to keep this review a lot cleaner than what I was originally going to put because of the age old saying "If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all." I found out about this band because they spammed every metal/guitarist related discord server to get people to listen to their music. It came off as desperate just like the people who spam in YouTube comments. The artwork is an interesting outline that fits the style of crossover thrash, but when I read the title, I couldn't help but cringe.

This is a short EP so I am going to do track by track, even though it is not a preferred method, just to clarify what I did and didn't like about each song. They have vocal and lyrical stylings of like that of Body Count and the riff stylings of Municipal Waste. Quite frankly it is a culmination of styles that doesn't work in my opinion. This album is heavily built into the spirit of 2020 by being about cops, boomers, and Covid. If it were done right it could have been an enjoyable experience, except for that "boomer" part, which is best left to thots on TicTok or whatever it is called. This release has decent composition, songwriting, structure, instrumentation, and good production. I think the band could stand to improve lyrically as most of it comes off childish and dull. The songs are nothing profound and aren't packed with any emotional depth of any kind, it is more of a tongue in cheek kind of writing that doesn't have the oomph to be comedic or satirical. The vocalist is laughable bad and should be replaced or practice a lot more, his technique is like a poor imitation of hardcore. He doesn't know how to sing and more or less sing-talks through each song.

The opening track "I Tell Ya" starts off with "ah yeah Hot Zone mother fucker" which was an immediate turn off and is followed by some less than tantalizing rhymes. The vocals are mediocre and chorus is too similar to X-Cops "You Fucked Up" and Brian Posehn "More Metal Than You" to be original, whether or not it was intentional, it is hard to get into the song because of those easy 1 syllable rhymes that makes it seem like a joke. The riffs here are repetitive but they aren't bad. The guitarist and the drummer are more than adequate. Around the 1:50 minute mark there is a bridge that is just ridiculous, "this is the part where I talk under the music, this is the part where the solo comes in see you later." But to their credit the solo has a great sweep picking section in it.

Then the track "I Get No Respect From Anyone" is your standard anti-police song that uses the pig clichés, cop/race relations, and police brutality. The lyrics again are amateurish. The main riffs here are your basic thrash power chord chugging and sustaining for suspense just before the solo. There is a pattern coming up, before each solo the vocalist must announce it "Here come's them Janks!" It was fine on Suicidal Tendencies "You Can't Bring Me Down" when they say, "Tell them what's up Rocky!" before the Rocky rips into his solo, but for this Hot Zone song it happens way to often to be entertaining.

Okay so if you've made it this far into the EP without leaving, I applaud you because it was torture for me to sit through the first time. I loathed every second of it. The song "I Bought A Cemetery Plot" starts off with your basic emotional wannabee Suicidal Tendencies and Metallica's "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)". It is a blatant rip-off of Suicidal Tendencies Alone or maybe it's just making fun of them because upon listening to it again I realized the vocalist is singing about sucking ass... Again, this is the childish crap that makes this EP suffer, they can be crossover thrash that talks about political stuff and injustice, they can also be a bunch of people with the humor of a kid in middle school but they can't do both and expect anyone to support them unironically. This band is a joke, now wait jokes are funny and require some thought...

Next, "The Guy Said" main riff is reminiscent of that one riff in Metallica's "Fade to Black" (at 1:42). They play the shit out of this riff in this song so much. It is almost like they were thinking, "How much can we change this riff up to make it our own?" the whole time they were 'writing' this. That's all I have to say about this song.

And the final song is a Body Count cover that is nowhere near as good as the original. They tried to be punny replacing Body with Boomer but it just changes the meaning of the song into something laughable. They try so hard to be Body Count that they don't have anything unique about themselves. Why listen to this cover when the original is arguably better. "Hot Zone bitches" There goes the EP. Writing about boomers in a thrash metal song is like painting about farting. It is nothing more than a crappy meme. They think they are the shit, but they only sound like it.

If you want to hear something that is actually worth your time, I advise you to listen to the bands they were trying to emulate but ultimately could not outmatch. Also, fun fact there is already a band called Hot Zone that uses the EXACT SAME LOGO, from Santa Rosa, CA. Just visit www.hotzoneband.com and see what I mean. They've been around longer, so there is some blatant plagiarism going on with this band. This release is not worth your money, time, or attention. I'm giving this a 1% because they had a minimal amount of original parts that were decent at best.

Recommended tracks: None.