Innsmouth - Consumed by Elder Sign
There exists a place that music critics dread. It exists somewhere in between “absolute crap” and “could be better.” It’s where bands like Innsmouth dwell, and is a place of abject boredom and painful tedium. Everyone is familiar with it but there are no words to describe it. It just is. You’ve just entered… The Blah Zone. Cue the shitty Twilight Zone music now. Yes, Consumed by Elder Sign, the debut full-length by Australian Death Metal band Innsmouth, is almost painful to listen to. It isn’t because the album sucks. If it sucked, this review would be much easier to write. It’s just so bland and lifeless that even describing how unexciting it sounds was extremely difficult. The music is slow, ponderous and about as dead on its feet as you can get without qualifying as in a vegetative state. On paper, it looks like this should be an awesome LP. The members of Innsmouth have all played in a number of bands (some of them fairly well known within the Australian scene) prior to this and they’ve been part of the Extreme Metal scene for ages. They should know what kick-ass Death Metal sounds like, right? They might know what it sounds like, but obviously they don’t know how to create their own. This lacks any sort of energy or heaviness. Even the awesome power of Cthulhu can’t save the music from absolutely depressing mediocrity. Consumed by Elder Sign has lyrics that are based on the writing of H.P. Lovecraft, but given the music and performance, you’d think the guys were writing about the daily life of cats. Only Innsmouth could take unimaginable horrors from beyond space and time and make them boring. Seriously, I’ve seen test patterns on TV that were more exciting than this album. The aggression factor needs to be ramped up by at least tenfold before I would consider it sufficient. When I listen to Death Metal, I want it to kick my ass, not put me to sleep. All Consumed by Elder Sign does for me is make me want to listen to a different record, preferably one that causes massive damage to my neck from headbanging. If you can’t use Ambien, but you have trouble sleeping, this is the LP for you. If you want kick ass Death Fucking Metal, look elsewhere.
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