Liste der Bands Melodic Death Deathred 18:03:20:888

DeathRed is apparently a melodic death metal band from Uruguay, fronted by a single performer who handles all instruments. Sludgy but technical guitar riffs and maniacal drum beats dominate their purely instrumental metal music. 18:03:20:888 is their second album.

Normally I wouldn't start off a review by spewing such obligatory information, but it's hard not to when there's so little to talk about on a particular release. What can I say here that can fill a full-length review? I could sum up the album in one sentence. It's repetitive. That is about all. But I guess I should get into detail.

The guitars are distorted like old school black metal songs by Bathory and Burzum, metallic and steely and cold, but they deliver riffs one would expect from a well-respected technical death metal act. The drums are wild, varying beats constantly and never becoming boring. They pull just as much weight as the guitars, maybe even more, since they actually vary more than the riffs and melodies do. Together the drums and guitars construct riffs that are easily headbangible and accessible. So where's the problem?

Well, despite every song on this album having very different titles that sound like little bits of thesaurus-derived poetry, and despite each song having very different run times, there is essentially only one riff on the whole album. At first I thought something was wrong with the files I had downloaded because every time a new track began, it started the same way, ended the same way, and did the same things in the middle of the song. One riff, over and over and over and over. This riff does vary in a minimal way every once in a while, hitting slightly different notes every once in a while to hint at variety, but it does nothing. The riff in question is an excellent riff, no doubt about it, but come on, there's gotta be something more to this album than the same thing repeating itself for twenty-five minutes. There's no layers here--you here it once and that's all there is to it. I listened to this album a LOT in the past week to see if it would grow on me the way much repetitive ambient music does, but it didn't at all. Long ambient tracks that top an hour in length can at least boast subtle progression and structure that works to an end, but here everything comes off as plodding without reason, like Ildjarn's album Landscapes. The riff is great, catchy and gritty, but it needs to evolve more. The guitar work utilized on the riff is also something to behold in technicality, but my interest waned before the short album was half over. I find myself more interested in those wild drums. Some of the time, just by changing tempo and pattern, they can make the guitar riff almost sound different--the drums are high enough in the mix to have that influence. They're really quite interesting to listen to for a while, but again, it's just not enough. This album feels like listening to drawn out nothing, basically. And the worst part is, I feel this band could be phenomenal based solely on what the guitars and drums can do when put together. I'd feel bad giving this an incredibly low score because I wouldn't want to disown such obvious skill, but there's minimal musicianship here, and that's the problem.

The only variation this album has is the final track, which is the same riff...only played backwards! And it, too, gets boring.

One only needs to listen to thirty seconds of one track to know what the whole album holds. It's mindlessly repetitive and sterile, despite the incredible drum and guitar work that does keep you banging your head for a while. The way the instruments, especially the drums are played, is the sole reason that this album does not get a 1/20 rating. The instruments hold up extremely well given they're basically playing the same thing again and again, but this whole album seems to beg for some sort of musicianship, some sort of direction. I'm not saying this guy should conform to chorus/verse/chorus standards, but I think the band has not realized full potential yet and until it does, I wouldn't recommend checking this album out unless you're a hard-core drumming freak.