Lunatic

So here we have a release from a band straight out of France. The first thing you're going to notice about this five-piece technical death metal outfit is the name. Pitbulls in the Nursery? That's fucking sick as hell. You get all these bands with "brutal" names like Force Fed Human Shit and Fecalized Rectal Sperm Spewage, but really, what you're going for is a name that's simple and not grotesque in its actual terms, but when it's all mixed together, you've got something that'll make people either laugh their heads off or jump in shock. This is living proof that you can make a brutal name without the words "shit", "sperm", "pubescent desire", or "eating the tits of dead fat girls".

Well, what do you know? I've actually started praising this band and I haven't even started talking about the music. I'm still on the band's goddamn name. Well, that's just the thing: this album is just great in so many ways. It's brutal, and all the elements - chanting, ambience, jazz interludes, guitar solos - they all fit together so well. This band took a total of five years after releasing their demo to create this, and it's evident they worked their ass off to make one of the best albums ever to grace this earth.

Let's start with the guitars. Now everytime I talk to a metalhead and bring up technicality and awesome guitarwork, Necrophagist becomes the topic of conversation. That band is not technicality to me, it is heartless wanking. Here, the guitars have somehow stepped over the imaginary boundary of technicality and wanking, yet this isn't wanking. I mean, the guitars are just as technical as Necrophagist's (I mean, listen to 0:36 to 0:53 of "Calibrated", to give one of many examples), but they stay in your head and the riffs are actually original and memorable. Give this album several spins and you'll be able to remember the majority of the riffs. The guitars are constantly making some riff that is catchy and can stay in your head forever. The magic of it all is that this is still death metal. Necrophagist play death metal, then technicality; this is truly technicality mixed right in with the blast beats and the death growls. There are jazzy sections in the album, but they don't feel forced or out of place; the song will give itself a little time to let the death metal presence radiate off, and then a jazz interlude will come in. Then, before you know it, it's packing distortion and an amp back into the formula, and you're back into the original energy of it. (The entire 2-minute song "Antagony" is an instrumental jazz piece and it is absolutely beautiful, if not a bit depressing. On top of that, the 10-minute hidden outro track is predominantly jazz as well.) On top of this, you've got the solos, which usually have groove, melody, and a swinging tempo. The solos generally aren't technical, but given the surrounding music, do they have to be? It feels completely natural for the guitarists to take a little breather from the endless craze of the guitarwork. And the bass...the bass is there! Yes, there is a bass here in this mix and you can hear it over 90% of the time. It's only following the rhythm guitar, but its tone is strong and it adds a lot to the music.

The drummer is very fast and he's not adhering to many traits of death metal, besides blast beats. The sound of the kit is strange; the snare sounds like a trash can lid (I have heard people complain about this before, but honestly, it's not that bad), the bass drum has a nice, thick sound to it, the toms sound industrial (that's a good thing), and the cymbals sound very pleasing to the ears (they have a very nice "ding"). His actual technique is very fun to listen to: a somewhat technical beat on the the snare and cymbals, mixed with a few seemingly incoherent blasts on the double bass throughout. It sounds a bit awkward at first, but you soon realize it's part of the beauty of the subtle insanity of the album in general.

The vocalist (who is not in the band anymore) communicates mostly using death growls. (Grunts are not to be found.) The growls are very gruff, and they are loud and yellish by growling standards, but it doesn't hamper anything. The vocalist's accent is not hidden by his performance most of the time, and I personally think it benefits the music. Sometimes, he'll let loose a black metal-style snarl that sounds particularly awesome. It fits the overall industrial sound of the music, and it doesn't disrupt the flow of the song as some bands' screams do.

Well, I have said nothing but positive things about this album. Why, then, is it only getting a 96, and not a 100? For one, the vocalist's voice sometimes sounds like he's been smoking too much pot or something; it's too hoarse. The other problem is a bit more evident once you read the lyric book: the band's English isn't as fluent as it could be. Sometimes grammatical errors pop up; at others, words are mispronounced (fon-uh-tics instead of fanatics) and emphasis isn't on the proper syllables. It's nitpicking, I know, but I'm an OCD guy. Besides, theoretically, an album review is designed to help you see the album's good qualities and its flaws. Well, here are its flaws.

Overall, this is a very great album and I doubt anyone will fail to like at least one song this CD has to offer. It's an interesting combination of different elements of music and it's unique in its own way. The technicality of it all warps in with the other elements flawlessly and it's integrated perfectly. I was addicted to this album after first hearing it, and it's likely you will become addicted to it, too. Listen at your own risk.