Against the Wall of Pretence

The association between brutal death metal and highly graphic lyrical and visual depictions of violence had already reached the point of cliche by 2011, and a few bands were already looking at alternative approaches to simply trying to take the niche originally explored by Cannibal Corpse and dress it up with elaborate physiological terminology. Among these bands that were looking at less cartoonish approaches to matching lyrics to the admittedly highly dissonant and ugly musical approach that the style calls for was Sickening, a band that would seemingly be as focused on the 1001 ways to mangle a corpse into oblivion as the next based on their name, but were onto something a bit more subtle just after the turn of the decade when they brought forth their second studio LP Against The Wall Of Pretence, a title that itself suggests a subject less splatter-prone and more abstract.

From a musical standpoint, this album is about as barebones as they come, resting in a comfortable middle ground between unfettered chaos and a purely groove-based slam approach, while the lyrics delve into the nuances of the human mind to draw forth its horrific imagery. The execution is highly competent and the production is rock solid, but the songwriting itself tends to be a bit on the safe side. This tends to work in the album's favor on shorter bludgeoning sessions such as "Unhealthy Illusions" and the title song "Against The Wall Of Pretence", which deal out concise mixtures of slow-paced chugs and blinding tremolo flairs in a symmetrical fashion and keep things to the point. The latter is actually one of the stronger offerings on here, and its recurring principle riffs, while fairly familiar, is memorable in the sort of "Tear out your ear and talk into it" mode of dissonance that goes with the style.

The primary flaw that dogs this album from its opening through much of its duration is a lack of adventurism in the arrangement when the songs go well past the three minute mark. The opening monster of a crusher "On The Edge Of Psychosis" has a nice creepy ambient intro that is followed by an ebb and flow between pure chaos and a creeping stomp, and there is even a brilliant thrashing section about 2/3rds of the way in, but it feels like its about 30 seconds long than it needs to be, which is a pretty long amount of time when measured in a brutal death context. The bass will occasionally chime-in apart from the rest of the arrangement and cut the redundancy a bit, but these moments are far too brief and fleeting. While this is among the better songs on the album, this Persian Flaw of holding on just a tad too long becomes more pronounced on subsequent songs, particularly the closer "Metal Collapse", where this formulaic approach starts to really run thin.

This is far from the worst demonstration of the brutal death style, and it is a breath of fresh air to have an album cover that doesn't look like a wildly exaggerated homage to either Butchered At Birth or Tomb Of The Mutilated, but it just feels as though Sickening was holding back in a lot of respects here. Generally when brutal albums of this mold get beyond the 30 minute mark, there is usually more fine detailing going on in the guitar work rather than a constant barrage of similar sounding riffs with only a few occasional twists to speak of. It's about on par with the weaker moments of Epicardiectomy that were on display at around this time period, though the lyrics dealt more with the horrors of the mind being destroyed rather than the body. A decent listen for those who like the format as simply as possible, but they would do this better on their next album.