Odium Humani Generis

Yes, indeed. What happened?

Their debut album, "Healing By Festering", was a death metal masterpiece. It was very unique and it had its own style that I hadn't really heard from other death metal albums. Pretty much all the songs had their own catch and were distinguishable from each other by some portion.

Now, two years later, they release this album, "Odium Humani Generis". They went through some major line-up changes between the last album and this one, so that could be one factor in the major change in their sound. And when I say major, I mean major. This is a shadow of what "Healing By Festering" was.

Now, this is not to say that this album is a complete throw-away. The beginning of "Blood Red Attitude" is one of the highlights of the album, and is pretty much the part I remember most. "Of Richard Ramirez" is a decent song, one of the best on here. "The One Great Sterile Death" is not such a bad song either, despite it being wedged between two filler tracks. This album is much darker than their debut, too. Evil, perhaps. Maybe that was the sound they were going for. If it wasn't, then they unintentionally made it sound dark.

Unfortunately, that's basically where the good points end. The drummer, while still capable as he was on the previous album, doesn't show as much skills here as he did there. This could be because of the strict direction and shorter length of the songs. Again, he shines on the introduction to "Blood Red Attitude", but I struggle to hear any other parts where he gets to really shine.

As I said, the songs here are much shorter...none of them reach 5 minutes (longest track is 4:17). This does not give the songs any breathing space for a nice solo or an instrumental passage. It really kills what could've been a much better album.

On an album that spans just 31 minutes, there are 2 filler tracks, "Watch How We Manage Your Lives" and "The Dull Flame Of Nihil". If you add the almost-unlistenable title track, that would be 3 filler songs. They take up approximately 6 and a half minutes of playing time. So that leaves just 25 minutes of song time. Another example of the abruptness and succinctness of this album. The filler tracks are not terrible, by any means (even though "...Manage Your Lives" has some annoying saxophone or something), but they could've done something better with them.

Perimeter lost their sampler/keyboardist, too, after their debut, which I think is a really huge loss for them. While he wasn't always at the forefront of their music, he added another dimension to it that made them that little bit different. I think his omission from this album has hindered the direction the songs could've gone.

The vocals are not bad. They still retain that anger and hatred they conveyed on their last album...perhaps even more so. He is a great growler, but every now and again, he'll add some deathcore bree's. Thankfully they don't last a long time, and they seem to be less frequent in the second half of the album. They could've been taken out altogether, but they don't annoy too much. Possibly the most annoying vocal passage is the very end of "Total Fuckin' Anti Positive". He yells something about "suck my motherfucking balls, you posi scum", or something. While he definitely sounds legitimately angry, it was not needed.

By the length of time spent on the negatives of this album, it really doesn't qualify as piss-poor. It's a good way to blast through half an hour, and there are just enough qualities to make this worth at least one listen. However, I know Perimeter can do better, and they have with their landmark album "Healing By Festering", so I hope that they go back to that direction on their next album. I won't be holding my breath, though.