NEMETH - Creature

[Zeus 7997]

Artist: NEMETH Album: Creature Score: Generic sentence for a generic release.

Everyone can thank paradoxal for this review. While in the chat, she suggested I try this out if I were in the neighborhood for something new. The most apparent thing from this experiment is how different my music taste is from the average visual kei fan. So, if you don't find yourself always agreeing with how I feel about these types of bands remember that I'm in a different place musically than most MHites.

I'm not going to whitewash anything: brutal kei is not my thing. Never has been and never will be. This is overly aggressive visual kei with a twist: there are some ideas here and there. I'll mention a few in this review. In between "here" and "there" is a lot of nothing interesting and a vocalist attempting to recreate sounds outside of his vocal range. His clean vocals are a little flat but he can harmonize and will improve with some practice. On the flip side, he's going to destroy his vocal chords if his vocal fry technique doesn't improve. Harsh vocals are not good by virtue of wrangling out any sounds possible and visual kei bands need to stop doing this. It never sounds good and never sounds like how it should. There's training that he must go through to achieve the power and technique missing in his delivery. So I'll just make a blanket statement now that every single attempt at sounding brutal on this mini fails. Charles Lee Ray II and Ellie in particular sound like a mess featuring lots of badly juxtaposed elements.

So that leaves us with three songs worth talking about and those three songs don't suck as much. The compositional formula is nothing new: aggressive verses into lighter choruses. NEMETH doesn't do anything wrong with it. The riffs are nothing special. I caught one reminiscent of G (Luna Sea)/Unknown...despair...a lost (Diru)/S.I.N. (-OZ-), so use that as a benchmark of "riff variety". Beautiful Distortion features some ideas where they switch it up with an attempt at polyrythmic riffing (note: they didn't actually nail it). I'll give them points there for trying. But much too often, there's just slow breakdowns, bad harsh vocals, and nothing in between. There was not a single solo or progression outside verse-chorus-breakdown interchange. An upside to this mini being short is that none of these songs drag on. If they were any longer all the songs would suffer for it.

Lackluster production for an indie band shouldn't be a surprise. I do want to mention the prioritization on heaviness over power. Metalcore works best when there is power and energy behind the music to deliver that rush. That power is not present here. The guitars have more weight to them than they should and while the bassist manages to poke through here and there with some interesting lines the bass pedal and most of the drummer is muffled. His omnipresent cymbal riding, which borders on abusive, is his only claim to fame. He has some moments like at the beginning of Curse and Beautiful Distortion where he is actually audible, but balancing in the mix is required. Not having a budget is one thing. Not having any balance is another.

At the end of the day, if this is the best that heavy visual kei band have to offer for me count me out. Another dime a dozen band that doesn't sound too bad but won't be going anywhere. If you like music like I've described, this is another solid metalcore release for you. But I'm positive that even within this scene there are other bands that do this sound better.