Type V Blood - Penta

Imagine cookie monster with a B.C. Rich Warlock guitar, and a 250 volt live wire running up his arse. You're getting close to understanding what I've just been through.

Where do I start? With the first track "White pride world wide", I guess. Well, shit. It sure ain't Wagner. A very basic synth line and kick drum start it off, with some wierd sci-fi synths rounding out the intro. Then we're straight into full on metal, smashed into the limiter harder than the kick pedal that's hitting the cardboard box. The vocals and guitars have been sonically shredded into an angry mess that lacks any sort of sonic depth.

"1000 Furious Gods" are probably just mildly constipated. The track is an unpleasant descent into schizophrenia, with bizarre warbling synths melting into neo classical interludes that would be more at home on the B-side of a Rhapsody of Fire demo.

Then there's an attempt to mix an air raid siren in with a Super Mario chip tune sequence. This is an intro to a track called "Black Metal Cenotaph". I can't make any sense of it whatsoever.

The aptly titled track "Dick" is indeed a giant sack full of them. It's a demented carnival ride into the bowels of industrial cyber metal. There are occasional glimpses of hope in this track - a synth sequence, a chugging riff, moments of clarity amidst the chaos. But it's not enough to pull it out of the gutter, the music is so fractured that it's practically intolerable.

"Christorium" is the first glimmer of hope on the disc, coming in at track 9. At last a genuine mix of electronica and metal. It's pretty derivative, but it works. As long as you don't mind happy hardcore mixed in with your death metal.

But amongst all of this, near the end of the album, are the only gems that you'll find here. In a bizarre twist, the remixes on this album far outshine the originals. For example, the Deception Cost remix of "1000 Furious Gods" blows the original out of the water, with hard hitting beats thundering across a solid electro industrial track.

The remixes are excellent, all that is except for Absenth's "Corebyte Bro Step Remix". Now I've heard to the original track "Corebyte", and it's great. The only track from Type V Blood that I really get into. So I can't even begin to imagine how large a pot you would need, to half bake this many genres into a single remix. It's a true sideshow nightmare, a caricature of every genre that it borrows from. A painful mess.

I think that these guys need to settle the hell down and pick a genre or two. By all means innovate, but this chopped up wacky cyber metal sound has gone way too far. Until the production levels increase, and the flow of the tracks is brought under control, I really can't recommend this album. Jun 07 2013