It's new RP, and it's... OK
Clark B. Timmins | West Jordan, UT USA | 08/14/2008
(3 out of 5 stars)
"No More Pain is Rudimentary Peni's 9th release in 25 years, adding 10 songs and about 20 minutes to the band's total output of 132 songs and 3.4 hours of music. It sounds disappointingly like Archaic (2004), itself disappointingly similar to The Underclass (2000), itself disappointingly similar to Echoes of Anguish (1998). The most-original aspect of No More Pain is that it has only 10 tracks (since 1995, R.P. had released only 12-track offerings). And of course the cost goes up $2 to make up for the 2 fewer tracks. If RP had released No More Pain, Archaic, The Underclass, and Echoes of Anguish as a single 46-track CD then you'd have something excellent. Of course, you'd have waited thirteen years to get it.
The artwork on the release will be familiar to any fan of RP, except that it continues the disappointing trend of becoming less intricate, less original, and less fantastical. The CD includes a "fold-out poster" that's about the size of a normal sheet of paper; the image is repeated from the CD sleeve. The remaining artwork is mostly scribbles. The back of the CD includes the track listing and all the lyrics (about 12 sentences, total).
Yes it's classic RP, and yes I'm damning it with faint praise. It's just that after spinning it a half-dozen times my honest conclusion is something akin to "It's RP! It's great! But... why bother again?" I know that every time you buy a Big Mac you get a Big Mac, but is music supposed to be like that, too? What happened to the brutal honesty that epitomized Death Church? The eviscerating creativity of Cacaphony? The psychotic bizarreness of Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric? The fantastical lyrical joyride of the EPs of RP?
Ah well, like me I suppose they're getting on. And it shows, too, in the lyrical fascination with death as an enviable methodology of obtaining no more pain. Oh, but what I wouldn't give for another forty-five minutes like the first spin of Pope Adrian..."
Track Listings (10) - Disc #1