VARIOUS ARTISTS Metal Ostentation Volume 5
Enclave/Sound Riot
2004
www.soundriot.net
1. AGONIZER- Whatever
2. THE OUTBURST Everlasting
3. BURST OF FIRE Perception of Normality
4. VORGUS Hellfuck
5. DEFORMED Powerspear
6. BORNHOLM On the Way Of the Hunting Moon
7. DRYADOS Lamour Nenleve Pas Vraiment La Depression
8. FALLEN SENTINEL Before, Part 3
9. WHISPERING GALLERY Mistress Guardian
10. FREQUENCY The Wicked Is Born
11. MANDYLION Distance For the Glory
12. DEFINITION OF CHAOS Malignant
13. PLAZMA ZATZUMA Stigmata
14. DISPERSION Ungeteiltes Leid
15. GATHERING DARKNESS The Cold of the Limbs
16. AMOK Idle and Silent
17. HERESY Phantoms of the Voidness
18. EXEKRATOR Acherons Call/Back To Hell
19. P.R.I.D.E. Pain
20. LANTZ -2040
Various artists albums are tricky to review, in my opinion. In instances such as this one, they serve to promote the artists, but more importantly they serve to promote the label itself. Sound Riot has an interesting roster, to say the least. Upon further inspection of the cd booklet, Im not even sure if any of these bands are actually signed to the label or not. A lot of the tracks are from demos, and there is contact information and bios for each band.
First band sounds like latter day CEMETARY, THE OUTBURST cater to the EVANESCENCE male/female vocal thing (that was shamelessly stolen from LACUNA COIL and the like), BURST OF FIRE remind me of MACHINE HEAD. VORGUS play old school death thrash and hail from Sweden, very metal indeed. I fuckin hate the chorus though. Hellfuck, hellfuck, hellfuck, hellfuck, hellfuck.
DEFORMED are similar but much better in their attack and execution. The next two bands are black metal, nothing spectacular to write home about. WHISPERING GALERRY starts off sounding like a doomy NOCTURNUS, but then the vocalist starts singing yuck. His growl is ok, but his clean vocal? Thats right, not good. Otherwise, an ok track. FREQUENCY play traditional heavy metal, a tad bit too mediocre for my tastes. In fact, I have never seen so many mediocre bands on one labels roster before.
MANDYLION have got to be one of the worst, and one look at their picture inside will only solidify that opinion. Cmon Japan, surely you have better bands than that! But, I digress; it just gets worse the more I listen to this collection of crap. DEFINITION OF CHAOS are from Sweden and play some sort of nu-tin (sorry, I cant refer to this as metal), and they have a guitarist whos name is Weapon and a keyboardist called [eak], spelled just like that! Original and crappy, yay!!!
This compilation is saved briefly by the all out brutality of DISPERSION, who are from Germany and tear it up CANNIBAL CORPSE style. The production of GATHERING DARKNESS is horrible; their guitars sounding like a low hum that never fluctuates in tone. Out of 20 tracks though, my favorite is probably AMOK, from Switzerland, very original, technical, jazzy death metal. HERESY have some pretty cool death metal riffs, nothing mind-blowing, but good nonetheless. EXEKRATOR are interesting with their black/heavy metal hybrid, and decent clean vocals that are reminiscent of Garm (ULVER/ex-ARCTURUS/ex-BORKNAGAR). They shouldve ended the comp. here, but instead I am forced to endure P.R.I.D.E., who are the worst KORN imitators from Spain Ive heard. Wait, they are the only KORN imitators Ive heard from Spain! And then if youve never heard Exometal, apparently its a new genre of metal. LANTZ claim to have music that one minute sounds like SUGARHILL GANG, then DREAM THEATER and then folk music. Dont be fooled, they are nowhere near any of those, and if you ask me, William Hung would put out better material than this.
Overall, I gotta say, Im not very impressed and theres a lot of work to be done with most of these bands. You know what they say back to the drawing board.
Rating:3/10
Papa Josh
