Macabra- Blood-Nurtured NatureI only listened to Blood-Nurtured Nature once. And in one listen, I am convinced that Blood-Nurtured Nature is the worst album of 2012 so far.
An international collaboration between American "musician" Mark Riddick and French vocalist Adrien "Liquifier" Weber, Macabra is an attempted return to the classic late 80's, early 90's Death Metal sound: just beginning to tear itself from the rotted womb of Thrash Metal dessicated corpse. For many, this is Death Metal, the only Death Metal. All other Death Metal is false Death Metal, devoid of the genre's true evil. It is fake Death Metal for pampered teenagers and false posers.
I am not one of these "old school is the only school" people.
Blood-Nurtured Nature is a sloppy, poorly produced mass of cliched Death Metal tropes that tries to sound like every single Death Metal band from the late 80's all at once. Considering Mr. Riddick can barely even play any of the instruments featured on this album, it's a disaster from the first minute to the last. In many ways, it's rather impressive that Mr. Riddick can play guitar, bass, drums and keyboard. On the other hand, the fact that he is incapable of playing any of them well enough for a major Metal release is a slight problem. The drums and guitars are frequently out of synch, and the guitar playing itself is so consistently sloppy and uninteresting as to be obnoxious. The entire album is one massive, brutal miscalculation from the start, and it never has a chance to recover.
Seriously, it's all bad. The production is nothing short of atrocious: the guitars sound like they are made of cardboard, the bass has absolutely zero punch and the drums sound flat and lifeless. The production quality remains consistently, obnoxiously thin and flat throughout Blood-Nurtured Nature's painfully long thirty five minute running time, and never fails to destroy any real value the piss poor compositions might have stumbled upon by sheer providence. The opening of "Contribution To Your Dis-Elaboration (Sustenance Of The Void)" might have sounded very brutal in an Undergang type way, if it didn't sound like it was recorded in a bedroom on a twenty dollar microphone. It's just so... bad. Even the aesthetic is dated and inoffensive, clinging for dear life to typical horror movie cliches and imagery as though they were some new, controversial idea that hasn't been used by every other fucking artist on Earth since the 90's. Korn features darker and less embarrassing imagery than the typical, played out "I'm a crazy serial killer" idiocy spewed forth by Macabra. Typical predictable aesthetics to go with typical, inoffensive Old-School Mash that is ready made for consumption.
Perhaps the worst part about Blood Nurtured-Nature? It has no identity. It has no purpose. It has no energy. The whole album is so by the numbers, safe and without the thrill of songwriting, it becomes impossible for the album to justify it's own existence.
And album must have one of three things to be truly worthwhile: creativity, proficiency and energy. If an album has even one of those things, it was a musical journey worth undertaking. Albums like Blood-Nurtured Nature were never meant to be creative or proficient. I get that. They are supposed to be little time machines to take listeners back in time to the way a genre was played back when it was a new thing. But an album like Blood-Nurtured Nature must have energy... and yet it doesn't. It's worship without any zealotry, as though the duo of Macabra feel they have to worship Old School Death Metal, but don't really want to. The whole album sounds like a painful and boring time sink for the band itself.
Is there anything worse, for the band or those who listen them?
Rating: 2/10
An international collaboration between American "musician" Mark Riddick and French vocalist Adrien "Liquifier" Weber, Macabra is an attempted return to the classic late 80's, early 90's Death Metal sound: just beginning to tear itself from the rotted womb of Thrash Metal dessicated corpse. For many, this is Death Metal, the only Death Metal. All other Death Metal is false Death Metal, devoid of the genre's true evil. It is fake Death Metal for pampered teenagers and false posers.
I am not one of these "old school is the only school" people.
Blood-Nurtured Nature is a sloppy, poorly produced mass of cliched Death Metal tropes that tries to sound like every single Death Metal band from the late 80's all at once. Considering Mr. Riddick can barely even play any of the instruments featured on this album, it's a disaster from the first minute to the last. In many ways, it's rather impressive that Mr. Riddick can play guitar, bass, drums and keyboard. On the other hand, the fact that he is incapable of playing any of them well enough for a major Metal release is a slight problem. The drums and guitars are frequently out of synch, and the guitar playing itself is so consistently sloppy and uninteresting as to be obnoxious. The entire album is one massive, brutal miscalculation from the start, and it never has a chance to recover.
Seriously, it's all bad. The production is nothing short of atrocious: the guitars sound like they are made of cardboard, the bass has absolutely zero punch and the drums sound flat and lifeless. The production quality remains consistently, obnoxiously thin and flat throughout Blood-Nurtured Nature's painfully long thirty five minute running time, and never fails to destroy any real value the piss poor compositions might have stumbled upon by sheer providence. The opening of "Contribution To Your Dis-Elaboration (Sustenance Of The Void)" might have sounded very brutal in an Undergang type way, if it didn't sound like it was recorded in a bedroom on a twenty dollar microphone. It's just so... bad. Even the aesthetic is dated and inoffensive, clinging for dear life to typical horror movie cliches and imagery as though they were some new, controversial idea that hasn't been used by every other fucking artist on Earth since the 90's. Korn features darker and less embarrassing imagery than the typical, played out "I'm a crazy serial killer" idiocy spewed forth by Macabra. Typical predictable aesthetics to go with typical, inoffensive Old-School Mash that is ready made for consumption.
Perhaps the worst part about Blood Nurtured-Nature? It has no identity. It has no purpose. It has no energy. The whole album is so by the numbers, safe and without the thrill of songwriting, it becomes impossible for the album to justify it's own existence.
And album must have one of three things to be truly worthwhile: creativity, proficiency and energy. If an album has even one of those things, it was a musical journey worth undertaking. Albums like Blood-Nurtured Nature were never meant to be creative or proficient. I get that. They are supposed to be little time machines to take listeners back in time to the way a genre was played back when it was a new thing. But an album like Blood-Nurtured Nature must have energy... and yet it doesn't. It's worship without any zealotry, as though the duo of Macabra feel they have to worship Old School Death Metal, but don't really want to. The whole album sounds like a painful and boring time sink for the band itself.
Is there anything worse, for the band or those who listen them?
Rating: 2/10
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