Human Target

I'm going to start this review by saying, that I enjoy the music Thy Art Is Murder usually produces. 'Holy War' and 'The Adversary' are probably two of the finest deathcore albums ever released. 'Dear Desolation' was much clearer with the view of the musical direction the band wanted to continue. Few good songs to begin with, but halfway to the album it pretty much flopped. It just didn't strike to me as effectively as 'Holy War' did. But it was 2019 and we got another album by these deathcore-titans. And to my disappointment, this album is exactly what I feared it'd be. It even triggered Chris Barnes of Six Feet Under for its name, Human Target, so you know it's going to be absolutely priceless.

Now let's start by breaking down a few of the songs in the album. First song we're going to talk about is the title track, Human Target. The song starts well with their signature chugging riffs and CJ's mid-low shouts. Although the play-through of the song is quite drawing, the structural parts get points from me. They build up the sound little by little throughout the song and their new drummer, Jesse Beahler brings in some solid drumming. At the end of the day, the song doesn't offer pretty much anything new to the catalog, except a tired attempt at trying to bring in distantly familiar technical riffs that almost could be trademark of old school Decapitated. The song overall after a few listens falls to the victim of its own lack of creativity and feels a bit held back.

We are going to pass a few songs here on the way. For example, 'New Gods' isn't really even worth mentioning, nor is 'Make America Hate Again'. Drawn out, boring and cheap riffs all the way through these songs, not even fun to listen to. We pretty much get something exciting in 'Death Squad Anthem', one of the highlights on this album. It has a little more punch and more death metal-ish sound to it. Closing in on the halfway of the album we get a treat called 'Eternal Suffering'. It starts the same way as Dear Desolation's song Death Dealer. The song has a little different vibe to it. The slow chugging riffs keep the song going, which is getting really out of hand boring at this point. CJ's vocals on this song are absolutely on point. They aren't all that basic mid-shout all the way through, he does a bit more variation. The song keeps dragging with the second guitars atmospheric play-through, which we got to hear a lot on 'Dear Desolation'. Now we get two almost exact same songs after one another, as 'Welcome Oblivion' plays next. The song structure is pretty much the same as in 'Eternal Suffering', it just offers less as a song to the listener. Same atmosphere, almost the same breakdown parts.

'Atonement' and 'Voyeurs into Death' give out more of a energetic kick, which the band is mostly known for. Atonement falls short by not offering anything particular that a listener could latch on to. Drawn out riffs and mid-shouts, once again. 'Voyeurs into Death' briefly reintroduces the good old low vocals of CJ, but the fun ends there. The song structure is as boring as ever and it has no replay value for the fact that it comes off as generic deathcore-song with chugging riffs, mid-shouts and blast-beats.

All in all, what do I think about the album as a whole? It is an album filled with a bunch of half or less decent songs. The songs offer really poor replay value, nothing new to latch on to. I mostly feel disappointed by this release. The sound of the album is very tiring, boring, uninspired and definitely holds no place in my record collection. Despite the few decent songs on the album, the entirety of the album is very lacking. You can't go on with the same chugging riffing and the same mid-shout and think that you can get away with it forever. This is a terrible effort done by the band. I suppose the scoring on this album gives away the quality of it. This is brutal honesty from a long time fan.