System of the Animal

New York death metal trustees and arguable trailblazers of the slam death style Pyrexia have carved a respectable legacy for themselves between their impressive, if somewhat flawed 1993 debut Sermon Of Mockery and the present day. But as with most bands that have been pushing the envelope for multiple decades, the eventual misfire was almost assuredly in the cards, and in their case it came about fairly early on with their largely forgotten 1997 sophomore outing System Of The Animal. To put it bluntly, like many bands in the mid-90s, the temptation of leaning into then more commercially viable territory a la the groovy, hardcore tendencies of big sellers like Pantera and Pro-Pain was very real, and it permeates nearly every second of this admittedly ferocious blend of unfettered aggression with a politically-charged lyrical bent. Sadly this hybrid approach mostly ends up clashing with itself, resulting in something about as comparably lackluster as a typical Six Feet Under album from the same time period, though touched by a greater level of chaos that comes off as scatterbrained and even sloppy at times.

In contrast to the somewhat hardcore-informed, but mostly well organized and musically intricate, Suffocation-inspired character of the previous album, this album has more of a through-composed, narrative approach that struggles to really take shape. There are bits an pieces of a truly ferocious groove metal album here that could stand toe to toe with The Great Southern Trendkill, and even some nice flashy lead guitar parts peppered about here and there, but each song while generally short in length, feels unnecessarily drawn out due to the generally rambling character of the vocals and the lack of any clear transition points between sections. At times it almost feels as though newly recruited front man Keith DeVito is reading off improvised slam poetry in a punk-informed death bark voice, with each verse having an undefined beginning or end point and the music attempting to reflect the shifting degrees of revulsion in his words.

On the positive side, DeVito's prime target of derision, namely infamous Nation Of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, is a worth target of scorn, and if one were to simply read the words of each of these songs without the music playing, it comes off as a pretty effective anti-racist polemic, but somewhere between the printed page and the auditory result the whole things just gets irrevocably mixed up. The riff sets being employed tend to run together, while there are only two contrasting beats to speak of driving these songs, namely a mid-paced stomp and a chaotic blast with maybe some occasional in-between moments that tend more towards the former. The principle riff of opener "Confrontation" and the closer "G.F.Y.S." scream mid-90s Machine Head with occasional hints of intermitted earlier 90s death/thrash, while the more chaotic stuff heard on "Downsized" and the messy title anthem "System Of The Animal" are a bit more chaotic and brutal in character, but the general feel of this album is a continuous blur of heaviness removed from any true semblance of organization and degenerates to mush well before the halfway point of its relatively short, 24 minute duration.

This is far from the worst thing to come out of the 90s groove metal craze, and at times it almost feels as though there is a decent death metal EP buried within several of these songs, but this is generally the sort of album that even the most ardent fans of groovier death metal will only want to hear once and then move on to better material. While one could point to some isolated points in the preceding debut album and see a pioneering work that would lead to the development of the subsequent slam death craze, here what is offered can be better understood as an incoherent mess of ideas that share the same hardcore roots, yet fail to really commit to anything resembling the brutal yet organized and stripped down style that would be ushered into the 2000s by the likes of Devourment and Cephalotripsy. For some odd reason Pyrexia recently decided to rerecord this album and resurrect the dated political rants contained within, but for those who want to catch this band at their best, their debut and other subsequent works are better options.

After the simplistic Effigy of the Forgotten worship of the excellent Sermon of Mockery, Pyrexia decided to spread their wings and break away from Suffocation a little and instead make their own style of brutal death. Unlike Suffocation who instead pushed on into more complex and technical realms, the 'Rex went the other way, instead chasing sheer simplicity. While they were never a technically complex band, the used a lot of tempo shifts and more complex compositional techniques to create their music, on System of the Animal this is still present, but used in a very different way.

What Pyrexia have done is change the goal of the tempo shifts, when they were following Effigy of the Forgotten's lead a little more strongly, the used the changes to create a sense of uneasiness and unpredictability just as Suffocation did, here they shifted to the goal of getting people moshing. The riffs are less sinister and a lot groovier, a technique which they used very effectively on the 2007 follow up Age of the Wicked, but it doesn't work anywhere near as smoothly here. The problem comes from the aggressive side of the band being pretty much ignored for the first half of this pathetically short album. While none of their other albums have been demonstrations of total destructive speed, that side of the band has been treated with respect and given it's time to shine, they just don't do it this time. Until the last three or four songs the band almost seems averse to being speedy and punishing, they just want to sit there and hit you with their heavy, low pitched bludgeoning. It's just the slow heavy part of the song, with all the speedy contrast almost entirely removed. It's almost like they wrote full 4 minute songs, and then cut out the two minutes of the song didn't groove well enough.

On the plus side, the grooves on this album are certainly more in line with brutal death than what they are on Age of the Wicked, so this probably less likely to annoy total brutal death metal fans, but they're overused and aren't particularly good. The fact that these songs are only two minutes long and spend a minute and a half of the duration slamming really makes them lose all effect. Luckily, the album ends with three pretty vicious little numbers which all deliver the blast beats and fury we'd all like to hear accompanying the otherwise overly mosh-friendly grooves. It just would have been nice to maybe give us a faster number early on too, I mean, the album is only 23 minutes long, adding in another fast track or two would hardly bloat the album.

The other big difference is the vocal style, gone is the simple guttural gurgling and replacing it is a slightly hardcore tinged barking grunt. Again, much like Age of the Wicked, it's not irritating for some reason despite being a poor match for brutal death, but due to the grooving nature of the album they do leave a little bit to be desired in terms of low end bludgeoning, which is what most of the album is focussed around.

This album is extremely tame. This is the band’s first try at the whole death/groove thing, and it shows, they just hadn’t got it figured out yet, and the result is pretty sloppy and boring. They totally nail this style of music on their comeback album Age of the Wicked, and do proper brutal death metal with a lot of slower, and I hate to say it, slamming sections on the debut. This is a bit of crusty old glue in between which really has no significance.