The Kennedy Veil - Trinity of Falsehood
As usual, there’s very little guesswork involved with what you’re getting from Unique Leader. Yet this sophomore outing from Sacramento’s The Kennedy Veil isn’t so much a technical Death Metal album for the sake of a technical Death Metal album as it is a half-hour long blastbeat assault for the sake of a half-hour long blastbeat assault. From the moment you press play, it’s evident that these drumsticks are on that Heisenberg. I don’t know what this snare drum did to piss off Gabe Seeber, but dude isn’t going to be able to wipe his ass by 40. A surgical beating so ruthless that by the third track, my wrist hurts. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to approximate that roughly 93% of The Trinity of Falsehood is blanketed by Seeber’s berserker blast barrage. What’s troubling is that the rest of what’s going on is buried beneath, simply overpowered by the relentless blast onslaught. It’s unfortunate because KC Childers actually knows his way around a riff. Compared to the drumming, his playing is not overly technical. Sure, there are sweeps and million-mile-per-hour scales, but it’s mostly a melodic, hook-oriented style. Vocalist Taylor Wientjes has a nice present-day Frank Mullen meets Mike DiSalvo circa Whisper Supremacy balance of brutal yet semi-understandable going for him. The problem being that by mid-album, the incessant jackhammer drumming lulls the listener into a near-meditative state of mind-wandering that transforms his vocal patterns into wallpaper. It hardly seems fair to fault a drummer for being too brutal —perhaps some blame should fall on the mixing job as well— but a few times per song, Seeber takes his foot off the pedal (…well… not literally…) just long enough for the rest of the band to show off a penchant for high-quality songwriting. It’s these moments when the songs are allowed to temporarily breathe —see “Seventh Circle”— that the album elevates from sleeper to keeper. I just wish there were more of them. Here’s to hoping that future spins will reveal additional worth.
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