Amoral – Decrowning
There are rare cases where mature adults are frightened of showering or washing. One theory is that as a child these people put their hands in sinks with burning hot water or around stoves with boiling water. They associate water with pain – a hypersensitivity disorder. I’m beginning to have the same feelings with Candlelight promos. They usually mean another triggered drum sound, sharp and punchy guitar riffs, and over-the-top accessibility to any listener of the today’s extreme bands. At what point did bands just do what they needed to do? Whatever happened to the monumental death metal albums? Have bands been so fortunate to find willing labels that they lost their drive to create something within their capabilities? Amoral is an incredible band and I sincerely mean that. Their tightness is catchy and there are plenty of hooks to be found. The problem is that they’re in all the right places. It seems to be a formula bands get too comfortable with. Edge of Sanity found their niche in pop structures and, to some extent, made them stand out against the other popular death metal bands of their era. Today these perfectly placed hooks just upset me. Its as if they’re trying to tease me with brutality or originality only to destroy it with mundane riffing a few bars later. The song “Tiebreaker” (these song titles are ridiculous) is a prime example with a riff at 2:25 completely destroying in a nu-death kind of way. Riffs like those come randomly throughout the album. Again, my criticism is based on the fact that so many predictable riffs come out in these songs. It makes it difficult to enjoy one riff or give it breathing room before the mood is destroyed by pseudo-Meshuggah chugging, nonsensical noodling solos, or slowed down Coroner rip-off riffs placed in the filler sections. To the credit of Amoral, there aren’t any breakdown riffs for baseball cap crowd (the vocals and sample on “Raptus” are surely enough to please them). I would like to see bands as capable as Amoral do something worthwhile with their talents. They know how to write great riffs and their direction is as desirable as anything Terrorizer would rave about. At some point I believe we all want to tell a band to do something different or give up. Personally, I’d like to see Amoral stop basking in their “brave” accessibility. Someone should make them think about what they mean for the future of metal in the presence of one of the many worthy, old and classic death metal bands from their country THEN make them hang out with one of their adolescent fans for a day and leave such a decision up to them. -TRA
SPIKEFARM/CANDLELIGHT
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