Band's List Technical Death Dystrophic Dystrophic

It's unfortunate that I'm not the type of guy who listens to this overly-loud psychotic death/grind metal, because I feel that I'm probably missing something that most grindcore and slam-death metal fans would be into. Dystrophic is the type of band that throws loudness in your face tirelessly for an entire album, with very little range. Their self-titled EP blends chugging blasting with frantic guitar riffs and occassional ambient interludes over an 18-minute period, creating a chunky and unfocused mix of melody and dominating force.

After a 50-second intro featuring sci-fi ambient noises that might remind someone of Beherit's Drawing Down the Moon, the album quickly takes the listener into a pit of white noise via blast beats, faceless wild guitars, and monotonous growls. The drums quickly dominate everything, making it difficult to tell what the guitars are doing unless they play notes on the higher strings. The vocalist is very run-of-the-mill Cookie Monster style, barking and spitting guttural roars into my ear, and over the course of the album I pay him almost no attentoin. If that's the fault of the production or the generic vocal style I don't know, but it's hard to pay much attention to him when the guitars and drums are going. Only rarely does the album break the wall of sound it quickly creates, and that's to put in a gap between each song and to (every once in a while) add a one or two second section where the drums play on their own or the guitar stands out with a real riff. The riffs that can be made out are flashy and sweet, good for a demo effort, but they have no real substance or presence in the music.

There are very few hook moments in this album, and consequently nothing to latch on to or focus attention on in the music. Most of the memorable parts of the album come and go blindingly, with frantic hammer-on riffs and speedy tremolo guitars. It's a little remeniscent of recent Cannibal Corpse efforts. ...That is to say, it isn't all that interesting but it has its fair share of standout moments laced here and there in each song. No song is inherently bad here, so I guess you could call the album consistent, but at the same time, no one song shines above the others.

The songs and by extention, the album seem to be plotless and unfocused; the songs leap from one thing to another like a kid with ADHD and none of them are longer than 3-and-a-half minutes, so everything comes at you heavy, hard and fast. There are some times where this works just fine--the guitars deliver speedy, solo-ey riffs as the typewriter drums machine gun their asses off, and it's exciting for a while, but it wears on me a little bit by the end, and considering that this EP is a mere 18 minutes, that's not very good.

It isn't totally boring or totally bad, though. It's just that by the third song or so the blasting formula gets old. There's nothing totally captivating or memorable about this album, and nothing too out there. It's a shame that this album has little to offer musically, because the band defenitely has some skilled people playing. The guitars are technically shocking when they want to be, and they quickly absorb all of my attention every time they come in with a comprehensible riff. But after a while even the guitar highlights become predictable.

The only saving grace from the tiring 'brutal' monotony is the three istrumentals strewn in here: an intro, an outro, and a weird spacey interlude at about the halfway point. These interludes provide nice little breaks from the hammering drums and cookie monster vocals, and since I'm an ambient nut, these quiet moments are actually the highlights for me. I think that the band might want to try expanding on these miniature sonic scapes--maybe even using them in the heavy songs to make everything seem more surreal and spacey. I think the band would benefit from trying to create some sort of atmosphere in their music. I'm not mush into this style of music, as I've said before, so I'm not totally sure if atmosphere is something you can combine with this sorta thing, but it would give the album more resonance with me for sure.

So, this Dystrophic EP is not bad; in fact it's fairly decent, but I don't feel interested listening to it. Aside from the weird interludes I mentioned above, the only moments that kinda get me going is when the guitars come up in front of the drums and launch into an ultra-fast tremolo riff... something that I can actually hear. I think that this album has a good length considering what's on it, and I do think that there would be many people who would appreciate exactly this type of release. It just so happens that I can only like this sort of thing so much, and I can only take so much of it. I think that those interludes defenitely help me to appreciate the album and are a good way to give the listener some sense of atmosphere while giving them a chance to take a breahter, and they allow me to listen to the rest of the album just fine. My last thing to really say that even though this album is not my kind of metal, it is a solid piece of work and a good start for a band's career.

This album is for those who want face-melting raw-power with little substance or backbone. Either headbang to its ferocious glory or yawn at its noisy monotony.

Dystrophic is a young technical death band that has huge potential. And they have done far more than demonstrate that potential by releasing their self-titled EP last year. If I could find a way to get my hands on a physical copy of this, I will. So please if any of you know where I can find this CD or can send it to me, please leave a comment! I want this record so bad! That’s how damn good it is and I suggest that you should listen to it and buy this hard-to-find EP. There are some extra unnecessary tracks in this album that I think should only be put in a full-length album, not an EP. But regardless, this record is more than enough to make a fan of extremely technical death metal happy.

Another reviewer on Spirit of Metal gave this album a fairly average score and wasn’t majorly impressed by it. I can understand why because he made it clear that really technical death isn’t really his cup of tea. I respect that because there’s no such thing as “good” music. Whether something is good or bad is 100% opinion. And my opinion is that Dystrophic is more than satisfying. Well I think I’ve done enough gushing over this band. You’re here to hear me go into this album’s details.

Dystrophic isn’t the kind of tech death band that has a lot of high-pitched complex lead guitar licks. Most of Dystrophic’s technicality and complexity lies within their drummer. Their drummer is pristine and obviously experienced in the metal music industry because he has the same skill and creativity as the drummer for The Faceless and Psycroptic. But don’t get the idea that the drummer is the only musician going crazy; the guitarists switch chords at unimaginable speeds in the lower down-tuned end of things.

The lyrical themes are obviously apocalyptic and space themed science fiction stories. The vocalist tends to focus more on the destruction of alien worlds and extraterrestrial apocalypses rather than focusing on stuff happening on Earth. This is something that I like to see because they’re expanding the sci-fi themes that more and more metal (primarily progressive and tech death) are choosing to use in their music.

I don’t feel that the interlude and the outro are needed at all. The intro is a bit dull but it has a quick build up at the very end that gets you ready for the explosion of chaos and fury in Total Existence Failure. Dystrophic then continues to constantly bombard you with unrelenting brutality and speed to then lead you into a relieving interlude…to then afterwards continue to bombard you until the end of the record. There’s one problem with their music. And that is that there’s no breaks in the fury, it’s just pure constant brutality and anger and it gets a little boring after listening to it for a while. Of course I have a level of understanding with them since this is their first official release and they’re still getting the hang of the songwriting business.

But as a critic, I’ve developed a habit of comparing every band with someone better. And even when I do that with Dystrophic, there are a lot of things about them that impress me. Believe it or not, this is a self-released album. The reason why this surprises some people is because of how professional the record’s production quality is. As a result of what this album has presented to me, I have become addicted to this band and will be the first person to buy a ticket to their concert and to pre-order their debut full-length release. I would give this record 17/20.

How can this be possibly labeled Death Grind?? General Surgery are Death Grind, and so are bands like Exhumed or Rotten Sound but in no way they would compare to Dystrophic. Probably some people got misled by a few things. They play ultra fast songs which are usually shorter than three minutes. Does that make you necessarily a Death Grind band? No.

If there is one band that could actually be compared to Dystrophic to give you an accurate idea of what these guys produce, it is Origin and unless I'm mistaken, Origin are far from being your typical Death Grind band. So you want to expect very brutal and very technical Death Metal and nothing else.

Now, taking Origin as your main influence is not necessarily the easiest task out there. It’s probably a lot easier to sound like Celtic Frost or Obituary (to sound, not to be) than to master the technique that is required to play something even close to Origin. But the guys at Dystrophic are this good and the sweeping guitars displayed in this eponymous first release will show you just how good they are. Understandably, such Death Metal is neither easy to play nor it is easy to appreciate. With the ongoing revival of Old School Death Metal that has taken over the last four years, it made things even harder for bands that wanted to play TBDM. Also because a lot of “soulless technical wankers” kind of killed the genre in my opinion (thanks also to the labels that signed them…[wink]).

It then takes real passion and a bit of madness to try and be the next best thing in technical Death Metal nowadays which are probably two things the members of Dystrophic have in large supplies. Personally I did appreciate this EP though I can perfectly understand how it could rebuke others. Probably the main concern, which may easily be perfected in forthcoming releases, is this kinda muddy production. In other words, besides the sweeping insanity of the guitars which concentrate most of the focus of the productions the rest feels a bit fuzzy. It’s not as if you can't tell the drums from the vocals, it’s never that bad, but it's not crystal clear either. And for records of such technicality, anything less than perfection will not do.

That being said, this is really the only thing I would complain about. It’s totally freaking insane and the rage is very much palpable. Should they be signed to specialist labels like Unique Leader or Sevared, these guys would get the right studio with the right engineer and probably come out with something that, although not fantastically original, would bury six feet deep under most of the competition in the genre.