Contractor

Lamb of God is always a band that I've thought of as fairly solid, even if I did find a lot of their work pretty samey. So I was really surprised to see that this single was rated as an average of 11% after 8 reviews. I mean, that's a really, really harsh score guys, isn't it? In thinking this I did fear that I'd made the same mistake as I did with Waking the Cadaver, but in all honesty this is a masterpiece in comparison to that band.

Now, first things first: just because I said it was a masterpiece compared to that piece of shit doesn't mean that it's great. Because really, it's not. And I'm not saying that because it isn't the genre of music I'd expect from LoG (although that is also true), it generally isn't a song that has much to it. It's deathcore, but deathcore done far, far worse than it could be. I don't know why they decided to add some of that to their groove metal style of music, but they did and it's not going anywhere. It can't be forgotten or anything, it's too late for that.

Anyway, to business: as I said, it's deathcore. Not too much else to say about that one. A weird "Weeeee" noise to begin with, and then the blast beats come pounding in and the guitars are just completely drowned out. Even the vocals aren't what I'd expect of the band. I don't know why, because normally Randy is pretty solid when it comes to growling, but they don't really sound right here. I don't really care too much for lyrics, but if I did I might take some more marks off. They're a bit lame to say the least. And as for the bass (when you hear it for about ten seconds when nothing else is making any noise), well, it seems to be played by someone who only has one hand. It's incredibly slow and sounds as if every note is spread ridiculously far apart. Thank god it can't be heard elsewhere.

The best part of the song is without a doubt the bit with the breakdowns. That's never a good sign. But hey, they're bearable. Most of the rest of it is just a random mesh of noise that doesn't have any real value. Oh dear god, I can suddenly understand all the poor ratings. Really, I should stop thinking that everyone on the archives doesn't know what they're on about. 0%? No. But certainly nowhere near being half decent either.

Okay, in future I'm going to try not to let my curiosity get the better of me. I don't know what to make of this, but it seems like it's the worst song on the album. I listened to a few others (although I don't care enough to write an entire review on it) and they all far outclass this track. Good thing too, because otherwise this band might well have gone completely over the edge in terms of good bands turned bad. Monotonous chugs and breakdowns with blast beats in-between are definitely not Lamb of God's style, and I really, sincerely hope that these reviews are a lesson for them. Honestly, go back to making groove metal that at least has some good things about it.

Now here is one to get the fists of wannabe gangsters and trying-to-hard tough guys pumping everywhere. Devoid of anything vaguely resembling value, this is a complete waste of time - I actually feel dumber after listening to it. From the irritating "look how tough I am" vocals to the inane lyrics and lifeless riffs, be sure a garbage can is in close proximity. Meant to appeal to the lowest common denominator, there is zero integrity to be found here. And seriously, does anyone actually expect a song that uses the word "guaran-fucking-teed" over five times to actually be good?

The stagnant ever-present palm-muted chugging and recycled metalcore riffs provides a musical backdrop that has neither any real energy or anything interesting. I call it a backdrop because the main attraction is obviously supposed to be the vocals. The vocals are harsh, but every word is easy to make out. It is blatantly obvious the vocalist is trying his absolute hardest to sound like a tough guy. Am I buying it? Not a chance. Not even the drums are doing anything remotely interesting here.

It gets worse. These are some of, if not the most, weak and shamelessly gimmicky lyrics I have ever heard. Although I somewhat agree with the political message, these are the worst. They are fIlled with vapid attempts at one-liners, stupid analogies and metaphors, as well as the mandatory testosterone driven attempts at appearing tough. Instead of rambling on about how god-awful these lyrics are, I'll let them speak for themselves:

"Yeah motherfucker, let's take a ride
We're rolling route Irish, someone has got to die
Trick or treat, it's IEDs
So roll the dice as we leave
Cause it's 8 miles of pure luck
With more bang for Sam's buck
Guaran-fucking-teed, someone will bleed
Guaran-fucking-teed, someone will bleed"

Although I feel most of their songs are filler, I'm not denying that Lamb of God do have some pretty good songs. This, however, is miles below filler. This is pure garbage, with no redeeming qualities. The guitar playing is rehashed chug-laden metalcore, the drummer is doing nothing special, and the vocalist really needs to shut up. This is probably just an attempt to cash in, and quite possibly an attempt to bring their political message to a larger audience by dumbing down their music for the average mallcore teenager. Whatever, there is no excuse for this trash. Next.

Originally Posted at:
http://ifthisishellthenimlucky.blogspot.ca/

Now this song is apparently receiving lots of negative feedback from certain people and I can understand why, since Contractor wasn't that great of a song after all. What's to say about the band in general, I can't call myself a bigger groove metal fan or anything but Lamb Of God does indeed stand out from many of the repetitive Exhorder/Pantera follower bands. The technical guitar riffing of Mark Morton and Willie Adler, Chris' talented and original drum work and Randy's aggressive vocals have always kept me interested in this band. Records like As The Palaces Burn, Ashes Of The Wake and Sacrament were all awesome but this song is not like that. I could compare Contractor to the Sacrament single "Redneck" as they both have at least one thing in common: being first single and the worst song off the album same time. Yes people I did manage to hear the entire Wrath album (a friend of mine downloaded it and sent me the songs) and I can tell this is the worst.

Now this song starts right off with a "WEEEEEEEEEEE" yell then comes couple cymbal hits (or maybe hi-hat, I'm not sure) and the song starts flowing with some Lars Ulrich-speed beat, double bass, fast palm muted chug riffing and vocals. This goes about 13 seconds and then the palm muted riffing goes bit higher and you'll get some gang shouts among Randy's growling. The song slows down in the chorus to introduce some groove riffing and Randy growling something among the lines of "Guaran-fuckin-teed, someone will bleed" but at least it's not really a breakdown. After the chorus you'll get the beginning riff again and the same pattern to the chorus is repeated again.

In the middle of the song the instruments suddenly stop and guitars fade to silence with a long chord and a small bass solo starts. Not really an interesting bass solos, just couple notes in a groovy pattern. Then you'll get Randy yelling "someone has got to die!" and the guitars kick in with a similar groovy pattern as that bass solo just a moment ago. The drum beat is yet again slowed down for the groove. After this little groove section ends you'll get out of nowhere starting a fast kick-ass riff and soon fast drums will kick in again among this riff and Randy also does a long scream on the top of it all. Right when Randy's scream ends you'll get loads of double bass from Chris Adler and then the chorus appears one more time and the song ends.

Riffs here are mostly palm mutes and grooving chords. There's not a single guitar solo in this song which is of course a bad thing and that disappointed me quite a lot in Contractor. Bass is almost inaudible apart from the short bass solo in the middle of the song. Now drumming isn't that special in this song since there's hardly any fills and the drum beats are quite predictable but the double bass section at 2:32 was pretty damn good. Chris Adler can do much better than this but for a song like this I think he did ok job. Randy's vocals however sound quite annoying here, he sounds pretty tired and and cracky and he just can't reach the aggression he had on Ashes Of The Wake and As The Palaces Burn. But at least he still has the wider range he represented in Sacrament.

Now I'd say this song does indeed have its moments but honestly an entire album full of this would equal crap.

Just like the line I mentioned above, this track makes no sense whatever as you must have figured out. I have never been a big fan of Metalcore but Lamb of God always stood a step ahead and a class apart from all other bands in their genre because of their last two albums, which were decent and had a few cool tracks.

This new single is, well crap. It sounds a lot like the work they did in their earlier days, which was useless to the very “core” for “metal”. Ah, so that’s how they came up with the name of this genre - “Metalcore”?

Now, as for the song, pretty much everything about this song is amateurish and bad. The vocals are possibly the worst thing here. They sound like a kid trying his first attempt at growling. The production is equally bad because the bass is completely lost in the mix. The only guy who has a truckload of talent and is very good is Chris Adler, the drummer and he, like a pack of cards has fallen along with the band.

The song structuring is pretty bad too. The band tries to change their tempo time to time and instead of falling in place they band just falls apart. A perfect example of this would be when the song suddenly stops all of a sudden mid track to give way to a bass riff (though it’s actually pretty much just a sound made off of a bass guitar) and is the only time you can hear the bass. Before I forget, the track starts off with Randy screaming like a little child shouting “WEEE”. Hell, this entire track sounds as if it was made by a bunch of kids.

“Guaran-fucking-teed,
Someone will bleed.
Guaran-fucking-teed,
Someone will bleed.

(Someone) tries to conceal off the night,
Big Business is booming, life's here to force them to lie.
No need for all the formalities, Jump the kangaroo corpse,
and flank beneath the trees.

Yeah, motherfucker, lets take a ride,
Running red lights in a green zone,
someone has got to die.
(Pity me?) There’s nothing here to see,
so throw the dice for me please, and let's
Store the pint of blood to cash in to refund”.

If anyone reads this review, my e-mail ID is given in my profile. Please explain to me what this means as soon as you manage to decipher it.

I'll be the first to show how much I detest poser tripe and stupid mallcore shit, especially bands like As I Lay Dying, Job For A Cowboy, All That Remains, and the list goes on. I absolutely loathe those bands, but for some reason Lamb of God always was a bit of a in between band; I won't lie... Ashes of the Wake was a pretty decent album that had some sweet songs (Laid to Rest, title track) but the rest of their discography was always far hit and miss. Their newer stuff is pure garbage, not pure American metal. It's a lame term as well.

So at this point in time I only somewhat spin Ashes of the Wake and completely ignore the rest of their discography; when people ask my opinion on the band I'll say if they never recorded said album they'd be 100% worthless and another sheep that's fallen into the big sea of shit. As of now they still are, Ashes of the Wake still isn't anything special but still it has it's moments that I actually enjoy. I wasn't expecting anything worthy with any of their future endeavours and even moreso when I saw the previous reviews, but I listened to it anyway.

...and it's pretty lame for the most part. Starting off the song with a "weeeee!" as if they're jumping onto the sybian with buttholes wide open... Contractor starts off surprisingly decent. For at least 25 seconds or so I'm actually enjoying the opening riff and the tempo/speed. Then about 30 seconds hits and it's an utter facepalm moment. Shame it all went to hell so fast, I've listened to the song several times now and am still amazed they let this go to hell. The song continues with utter boring moments and weak attempts to creating some groovy riffing and lead work when it just comes off as simply "mallcore". The bassline is just something unnecessary and pointless, as well as the lyrics. I mean c'mon, I'm not expecting vocalist Randy Blythe and co. to be Chuck Schuldiner or whoever in the lyrics department but this is just plain stupid. I've always thought their lyrics were bottom of the barrel lame but it's gone too far now.

Randy Blythe is another point I'd like show up; this guy has got some cool vocals at times... but not here. His vocals have gotten progressively worse since the Ashes of the Wake-era, at least then I found him tolerable; here it's just gotten more and more accessible and mainstream sounding, but it still has the same tone, I just don't get it. Lamb of God is officially worthless (as if you needed more proof) but here it is; their upcoming album Wrath is going to suck as much as the previous. All that wasted talent that could be somewhat discovered on Ashes of the Wake has been pushed aside like Britney Spears' dietrician. Fuck, this band is dumb... there was potential here as well, REAL potential! You could have done something with this jus tlike your career (well at least you'll be making money you cash fiends). Congratulations for being a mainstream band 'cause ya sure don't care about winning over anyone else but the mindless sheep.

It’s a shame that crappy bands like these have a fan following bigger than xyz. But the fact does not surprise me, after all, what do you expect from a crowd where a majority of people just want distorted guitars, double bass and some moron who can merely howl. It seems like mediocrity is the very foundation of this genre.

This pathetic little song keeps up the tradition by being utterly devoid of any ounce of feeling or identity whatsoever. It starts with a weird “wheeee” noise like one makes when on a roller coaster, and then SUDDENLY, we have double bass flying over the place and the vocalist starts trying to explain something which human ears cannot decipher. Not to mention, behind all this, we have the constant chugga chugga palm muting sound.

The song starts losing it’s speed and goes dead at about 1:20, only to be followed by a bass riff which I expect from people who picked up the instrument less than a fortnight back. The whole thing then starts again, repeats itself yet another time, and voila, the excruciating experience is over.

New Wave of American Heavy Metal, the name is unoriginal and the music is uncreative. Please don’t promote this crap!