A pineapple is not a very good sausage. If you want a cup of coffee you’re not going to buy a Gatorade. If you want metal… Well, don’t buy Manifesto!
I’m all into progressive and groove. I like when bands play insane mixes of genres and vary their albums. Check out my review of Defenestration from September, if you don’t believe me. But even I have limits. Deadlock simply crossed too many borders.
Too many borders? Actually I don’t think that’s possible. The point is, they crossed the wrong borders. I’ve heard metal blended with everything from opera and Chinese folk music, to Dutch hardcore techno – and I liked most of it. But there are some things, some evil and perverse artifacts buried out there – to phrase it like H.P. Lovecraft would have – that human being are not meant to uncover.
I’m talking about the disturbing fifth track of Manifesto, Deathrace, that kicks off with some fairly brutal melodic death pieces, then enters into nu-metal-like female-sing-a-long-song torpor, then plummets into the depths of the abyss. The abyss called Rap…
Holy fucking hell! We’re not talking of mere rap-influences like you see with Clawfinger and Bodycount. We aren’t talking of utilizing a few random fragments of ghetto music. No sir, we are talking a complete breakdown. We are talking metal suddenly stopping, rap taking over, and that’s it. As if that weren’t bad enough in itself, the song is about animal rights! Deathrace goes from blast beats and doom strings to dissin’ da’ fuck’in meat industry, ka-boom, just like that!
Until this new low in prog metal, Deathrace that is, Deadlock has served some dull courses of melo-death/nu-metal spiced with electro-pop, dub and girlish industrial. The diner will choke on the main dish – Deathrace – and desserts and coffee won't make it up to him. The music experiments – and I’m not against trying – but I don’t get the choices made. What is that saxophone doing in Fire at Will (another animal rights thing), for example? It’s hard for me not to just start ranting away at this point. Why does Sabine Weniger have to sound like a little girl? Seal Slayer – “Respect the Sea”!!? I’m trying to laugh, but I can’t while I’m crying. This is a very angry bunch of hippies, indeed!
I have to stop here, before I make even more of a fool out of myself. I’ve really tried to find some sort of apology on behalf of this crappy album, but I’m not that good at digging gold, I guess. Please remember this: I don’t hate when bands experiment. But I despise it when the experiments fail, and are released upon my world.
