Kenneth W. (Eyesore) from TAUNTON, MA
Reviewed on 12/4/2007...
Bludgeon first came onto the world scene around 2002 -- via Joey DeMaio's (Manowar) Magic Circle Music and Metal Blade Records -- with their sophomore album, Crucify The Priest, was a thrash/death hybrid album that mixed the occasional speed of early Slayer with the death metal groove of Obituary and the brutality of Cannibal Corpse. While not being anything groundbreaking it was a solid album of crushing, brutal metal. Four years later the band has returned -- once again on Magic Circle Music via SPV -- with World Controlled. Those that remember Crucify The Priest, or their debut, Inner Hell, will find little resemblance to those earlier releases.
World Controlled has far less in common with the death metal of their first two albums and more in common with the sort of metallic hardcore (read: not metalcore) of a band like Pro-Pain. The problem is that Pro-Pain are masters of their domain, while this new incarnation of Bludgeon just seem to be going through the motions, unfamiliar motions. They still wield a sword with a sharper metal edge than the likes of Pro-Pain et al., but the moment the first track, "Carnage Begins," kicks in and the almost-drum machine-sounding double-bass and generic riffs lead into hardcore shouting and garden-variety metal smatterings you're already looking ardently at the stop button.
The album follows the same not-worth-describing path for eleven tracks, mid-paced hardcore with a pronounced metal lean. The production, courtesy of DeMaio, is great, aside from the drum machine sound which isn't necessarily bad, but it just doesn't sound natural. Gone is the speed, except for brief moments dispersed illiberally throughout. Gone are the death metal vocals, replaced with middle-of-the-road hardcore shouting. Gone are the solos, replaced by repetitive, generic riffs. The verses and choruses are unmemorable and the band just meanders through the muck and mire of mediocrity. And while the band shows brief flashes of what they once were they're essentially a completely different band now. If the music was good, though, that would be much easier to overlook, in fact it wouldn't even matter. Unfortunately, this album is just frozen in place as soon as it starts, it goes nowhere fast; World Controlled is an audio diary of a band gone awry, a forty-minute lesson in utter mediocrity, a once-ferocious beast now roadkill (dead) in the middle of the road.
Website: http://www.bludgeon.tv
Track Listings (12) - Disc #1