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THE BLACK DHALIA MURDER
DEFLORATE
METAL BLADE RECORDS
I am seriously getting tired of having to sit through albums like “Deflorate”, the newest release from death metal ensemble The Black Dahlia Murder. I know there are people waiting with bated breath for this album and as far as I’m concerned they can have it. If I want this much boring repetition in my life I’ll move a cot next to a Xerox machine and live there. Nothing on this album is the least bit interesting and what’s worse it feels like The Black Dahlia Murder want it that way.
“Hey Iann have you heard the new Black Dahlia Murder?”
“Yep”
“How would you describe it?”
(Pause)
“Fast.”
That’s seriously about the only thing I can really say about Deflorate, it’s really fast. The Black Dahlia Murder can play….really fast. The guitars are really fast, the drums are really fast, the vocals are really fast and in fact this entire record is (you guessed it) really fast. The problem is that fast doesn’t mean good and in the case of this album it doesn’t even mean interesting.
Deflorate kicks off with the song “Black Valor” which does a splendid job of setting up the rest of the album. There’s an opening riff, the double bass drums come in at a lightening pace followed by the highly annoying screech vocals.
From there the good times really start to role because we get a super duper fasty fast solo that winds itself around the crazy super fast riff. I’d go into the next nine songs but it serves no purpose because each song sounds exactly the same. Perhaps the vocalist will really try to spice things up by doing a deeper growl but outside of that nothing much changes.
This kind of hyper fast playing serves no purpose other than to prove a band can play their instruments at blistering speeds. Even if the riffs were cool there’s not way to decipher them while they’re jetting past you at a thousand miles an hour. The point of a good metal record is to get caught up in the songs not feel as though you’re listening to a broken cassette deck stuck on fast-forward.
Some will say I just don’t understand death metal and if that’s true so be it. If comprehending the world of death metal means I have to champion mediocrity just because it’s played quickly then count me right out. If the world of metal has fallen so far that all you need to do is yell and play fast to be considered good then I’d like to turn in my Heavy Metal Inspectors Badge.
There is so much brilliant work going on within the world of metal and other extreme music to pay any real attention to drivel like this is pointless. Sure fast has its place in metal but only done the right way. The songs need to stand out, the riffs need to be incredibly powerful and personal, in short you need to connect with what’s going on. How do you connect at something moving so fast you can’t hear it?
My opinion of The Black Dahlia Murder and their new album “Deflorate” may add fuel to the fire of those who claim I’m not metal enough but seriously, if that’s what it comes to, screw ‘em. If carrying the torch for metal heads everywhere means I spend my time racking my brain for nice things to say about bad bands then I gladly pass the buck. Music needs to move me both emotionally and mentally regardless of what genre it is. The Black Dahlia Murder might be able to do that if they’d slow down long enough to actually write songs instead of concerning themselves with who can play the fastest.
