BLEEDER’S DIGEST: QUICKIE REVIEWS OF NEW RELEASES FROM ANIMA & NATIVE

Anima, Enter The Killzone
As many of you know, I’m one of the few people writing for this site willing to give some positive attention to deathcore. With forthcoming albums from Oceano and Rose Funeral still on the horizon in 2010, I thought I might get my quick fix of pig squeals and breakdowns from this, the sophomore album from Anima on Metal Blade. Regrettably, Enter The Killzone sounds like a copy-and-paste job lacking any serious effort to actually write songs, all the more astounding given death metal’s already low threshold. Here you’ll find all the familiar deathcore markers, ticked off as if on a checklist. The triggered drums grate on my patience even more than my ears, and the guitarist proves incapable of crafting a half-decent breakdown. The song titles–“Cu(n)t & Twist” and “The Omnipotent Torture King”, for example–frequently rely on torture porn schlock, another testament to Anima’s complete and utter lack of creativity. “XXXIII”, an apparent attempt at a Winds Of Plague epic, kicks off like the score of a Vincent Price B-movie and gets even worse from there. By deathcore standards, this is a remarkably piss poor showing.

(1 out of 5 horns)

Native, Wrestling Moves
With so many fledgling metalcore bands carelessly mislabeling their indeterminate, inconsequential music as “post-hardcore”, it’s invigorating to come across a new act that actually follows the example of Dischord Records groups like Fugazi and Hoover. Sure, Native may employ screamed vocals (not unlike those of At The Drive-In’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala) over their angular musical mix, yet to brand them screamo would be downright insulting given the high quality of tracks like “Backseat Crew” and “Shirts And Skins.” Save for a somber reprieve on “Five Year Payoff,” the songs generally boast the same formula, and while it’s a damn good one, that makes Wrestling Moves less potent than it could have been. Still, if what the kids today call “emo” makes you want to firebomb a Hot Topic, Native might keep you occupied long enough until the FBI arrives to arrest you.

(3 out of 5 horns)

-GS