...Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust...

The Mist's third release is a party that never really grows from the initial outset due to this continual, nearly front-to-end chug-a-thon. This plays a simplified, stripped and straightforward form of '90s thrash mixed with some loose shreds of mainstream industrial: a recording that embraces a full display of mostly unchanging, thicker sounds that attempt to take on a role of bully through the limited intellect of a machine.

There are samples littered about here: some spoken in drive-thru-speaker, mumbled fashion, others likened to emulated factory/engine sounds. Even so, this seems like a distraction that there isn't very much going on. There are a few workable ideas that take a dodging direction but, then again, can feel stretched. "Disaster" is their longest, slowest and most atmospheric, and by the end it's gone beyond its usefulness by repeating the same set of notes without very many shifts or nuances. Yet it begins by using these cool sounding spacey strums with a few notes hit and slightly rung out as the drummer plays a plodding beat and the vocalist comes overtop intermittently with a delayed effect after each sentence.

The main vocals have effects run through them to give it this slightly obscured, cyborg-like sound, along with a few that are like a cross between a call into a radio station and a bad transmission between walkie talkies. His underlying delivery is pretty flat, hardly using any rises or falls, attitude, charisma or any shred of actual force to MOVE this thing forward. Korg he is not. Hal neither. T-800? Not by a long shot. Take away the effects on top and you'd be left with this ineffectual, mildly roughened vocal tone that would fail to get anyone's attention in even the smallest of crowds. Playing live and the soundman being fresh out of effects would be a moment of panic and transparency.

This is too early on to have the guitars downtuned, so the tone is still leaning more towards general thrash. The rhythms can range from concentrating on the sway of the song to being more aggressive. This includes a few pausey chug sections that became a standard in groove: a technique that takes a thrash limb and bites the meat down to a malnourished bone. They often use rapid-fire chug and chord combos that repeat themselves into an on-going cycle. I'm sure Ministry was in their sights, except where Ministry held you in a trance and had separating songs, The Mist shuffles around only a few ideas and then carries them over to the next track ad nauseum. The drums sound mechanical, most likely on purpose, though definitely loud, level and clear, and with a few effects to expand hits, such as one using a piston-like noise in a few spots.

Overall, "Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust" feels sterile, unexciting and uncaptivating either from the new vocalist who's command was probably tested out on polite hard of hearing folks or a ward of coma patients, or from guitars that are simplified to such a degree that this is left without major spontaneity or moments that will dangerously leap out. Compare this to how disappointing it would be to travel to the outer reaches of space, only to find the spot you're in is pretty bare and lifeless: sounds gone, sights minimal; if you'd brought your camera, it would remain off, if you'd tune your brain to "sponge," it would come back unabsorbed. After this it only got worse as they dived head first into a '90s groove direction and even further dropped members and pushed away from their former involving compositional skills on the first two, so much so that it doesn't even resemble the same band. Neither of which are very representative of The Mist's capabilities or former state of quality as musicians as far as I'm concerned.