Make no bones about it; I went into Fear Factory’s latest album Archetype expecting to hate it. The band’s last several albums have been less-than-cohesive, with the musical rift within the band exploding last year onto the internet into a very public and (one would think) embarassing implosion of the band. Most people thought the online name calling and finger pointing from band members would surely spell the end of the band, but a few press releases later, it was announced that Burton C. Bell (vocals), Raymond Herrera (drums) and Christian Olde Wolbers (bass) would continue on under the Fear Factory name, with Wolbers performing six-string duties in the studio as well. When I heard that the band’s new album would not only not include Dino (ex-guitars, and a major contributor to the writing process) but would also be produced by the band, my guess was that Fear Factory’s latest album would be, at best, St. Anger-ful.

Well, color me surprised. Archetype isn’t that far off from Obsolete or Digimortal. In fact, the first six songs on Archetype give Demanufacture a run for its money. If you’re one of the fans who have been waiting for Fear Factory to release “Demanufacture Part II” all these years, you will be in heaven; or at least for the first half of the album.

When your band is known for a signature sound, your fans don’t want to hear your experiments. No fan of Demanufacture’s machine-gun kick drums and rapid-fire tight riffs ever wanted to hear a Fear Factory/Cypress Hill collaboration, and it seems like, at least throughout the first six tracks, the guys in the band finally got the message.

Archetype feels like two separate two albums. After the first six tracks (all of which pound hard), the album takes a sharp turn from which it never really recovers.

Track seven, “Bite the Hand that Bleeds You”, belongs on an adult easy listening radio station. “Human Shields” is a complete snoozer, and “Ascension” is a seven minute keyboard soundscape that they should put in those little electronic machines that you put next to your bed to make you fall asleep faster. The three songs between those have that “New Factory” sound — lots of open chords and singing, in contrast to their signature sharp, staccato sound. While the first half the album is definitive Fear Factory, the “New Factory” songs might as well be anybody.

The album closes with a cover of Nirvana’s “School”. I don’t know if this an attempt to repeat the success the band had with their last cover tune, “Cars”, but “School” seems too obscure of a song and too heavy for radio play to win over the amount of masses “Cars” did.

I don’t know if the first six tracks of Archetype are left-over Dino-era Fear Factory tracks or if they were just written to sound like it, but in my opinion, they’re worth the price of admission. Besides them, you get three iffy tracks, three throw away ones, and one cover tune. The album immediately following the loss of a major member is always a proving ground, and judging by Archetype it sounds to me like Fear Factory can still hang.

If he cared to, Mike Patton could be the biggest rock star in the world. He has good looks, a sense of humor, an incredibly sharp wit, an uncanny ear for catchy pop, and a true desire to create music. Everything he touches turns to gold. After Faith No More had released out two mediocre albums, Patton joined the struggling outfit and turned them into one of the biggest bands of the late 80’s/early 90’s.

To understand why Mike Patton ISN’T the biggest rock star in the world is to truly appreciate that which is Mike Patton.

Patton is a musical innovator. Albums like Faith No More’s Angel Dust or anything from Mr. Bungle (one of Patton’s many projects) prove this point. Patton often creates music that is beautiful and catchy. He also creates a lot of noise, often by crossing genres (jazz and death metal, or thrash and circus music) that don’t seem to go together. Unfortunately, so far he hasn’t been able to create both at the same time. Faith No More’s most popular material was Patton’s least favorite. When Patton truly expresses himself, the trade off is marketability. Mr. Bungle’s music tough to listen to at first, but it’s a million times more accessable than Fantomas’ self-titled debut album, which was little more than an experiment in noise.

Patton may have finally found the perfect mix between self-expression and marketability on Fantomas’ second album, The Director’s Cut. Fantomas, a supergroup of sorts, have released an album consisting of sixteen movie soundtrack covers. King Buzzo (Melvins/Guitar), Dave Lombardo (ex-Slayer/Drums) and Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle/Bass) round out the group’s odd yet interesting take on the genre of film themes.

The music has been retooled into clever works of pop music mixed with everything from strange keyboard soundscapes to death metal. It’s obvious that the boys want you to think about what you’re hearing, but they haven’t distanced themselves as far from the mainstream this time around. True, you’re probably not going to hear the themes to “Experiment in Terror” or “Charade” on the radio anytime soon, but unlike the first Fantomas album these songs have structure. Strange, complex structures sometimes, but structure none-the-less.

A welcome change from their last release is Patton’s vocals. Their debut release only contained screams and grunts and other gutteral noises, but no actual words – The Director’s Cut makes up for that with Patton doing everything from whispering and singing on “Spider Baby” to using his voice as an instrument on “Rosemary’s Baby.” The rest of the band pulls their weight as well. Buzzo’s guitar has never sounded good, and any Melvin’s fan should get a kick out of this album. Dunn’s bass work compliments everything with his almost lounge-like approach, and Lombardo on the skins plays everything from the oddest of time signatures to blast beat moments, switching back and forth flawlessly.

Some of the songs lack pop-sensibility, but you get the feeling Patton wanted it that way. Just a spoonfull of sugar helps the medicine go down. The album builds to a frenzied head during “The Omen (Ave Satani),” and then levels out with the heavy-yet-calm “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion,” and “Twin Peaks – Fire Walk With Me,” before bringing the listener back down with “Charade.” “Charade” is a perfect ending to the album, mixing both calm and frantic moments of music.

Patton and Fantomas have created some interesting stuff here. It’s doubtful that you’ll recognize many of the songs, (“Oh! Isn’t that the theme from Der Golem?”) but that’s not really the point here. The band has taken pre-existing material and worked it into something original, interesting, and at times, challenging to listen to. The payoff for investing listening time is great, as the album is a terrific example of what Fantomas is capable of. The album has enough easily accessable material to draw in non-fans, but contains a wealth of challenging music as well to keep you listening for a long time.

This could be the album that gets people to quit referring to Mike Patton as “the former lead singer of Faith No More,” and start calling him “the current lead singer of Fantomas.” The band cut enough tracks for two albums, so a third Fantomas album should be out late 2001/early 2002. Better jump on the bandwagon now.

01. The Godfather
02. Der Golem
03. Experiment in Terror
04. One Step Beyond
05. Night of the Hunter (remix)
06. Cape Fear
07. Rosemary’s Baby
08. The Devil Rides Out (remix)
09. Spider Baby
10. The Omen (Ave Satani)
11. Henry – Portrait of a Serial Killer
12. Vendetta
13. (Blank Track)
14. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
15. Twin Peaks – Fire Walk With Me
16. Charade

Maybe you’re like me — you like the idea of festivals, but you don’t like attending them. Sure, seeing a dozen bands in one day would be great, but who needs the crowds, the heat, the pushing and shoving, and the overpriced bottled water and T-shirts? So, if you wanted to experience last year’s Family Values Tour but didn’t make it out of the house, crank up your heater, send me five bucks for every glass of water you drink, and pick up this year’s Family Values Tour CD — it’ll be just like you were there!

This year’s Family Values Tour CD contains 12 songs recorded live during the festival. All of the songs on this CD sound great — I have no problem with the quality of the recordings at all. The recordings are loud and crisp, with great mixes and just the right amount of crowd noise throughout the tracks (a lot in between tracks, and very little during the songs).

Stone Temple Pilots win the award for most songs on the CD, taking up 4 of the 12 tracks. STP appears on the CD with versions of “Vasoline”, “Wonderful”, “Wicked Garden” and “Creep”. While all the bands on the CD sound good, STP proves that they can still pull it off live and they sound great doing it. Maybe it was the heat, but every STP track on the disc is slower than the album version for some reason.

Staind appears several times on the compilation. While the whole band performs both “Fade” and “It’s Been Awhile”, Aaron Lewis performs a solo, acoustic version of Pearl Jam’s “Black”. Lewis also jams alongside Stone Temple Pilots during “Creep” and with Linkin Park during the CD’s closer, “One Step Closer.”

Linkin Park appears a second time on the disc, with “Runaway”. Static-X appears twice with their singles “Cold” and “Push It”, and the disc is rounded out by newcomers Deadsy with their cover version of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer”, which is much better than it sounds on paper. Deadsy’s fuzzed out, overdrive guitars combined with clean keyboards and eerie vocals will have kids lined up for blocks for their debut CD, I’m guessing.

The positive? Most of the songs on this disc are things you’re just not going to find elsewhere. Whether it contains cameo performers or just live cover songs that don’t appear on albums, most of the tracks are original in some way. Of course, the negative is that it contains a lot of Linkin Park and Staind.

01. Vasoline Stone Temple Pilots
02. Runaway Linkin Park
03. Fade Staind
04. Wonderful Stone Temple Pilots
05. Push It Static-X (featuring P. Exeter Blue)
06. It’s Been A While Staind
07. Wicked Garden Stone Temple Pilots
08. Cold Static-X
09. Black Aaron Lewis of Staind
10. Creep Stone Temple Pilots (featuring Aaron Lewis)
11. Tom Sawyer Deadsy
12. One Step Closer Linkin Park (featuring Aaron Lewis)

I saw Faith No More live for the first time in 1990, in a little club located in downtown Oklahoma City called Kinetix. According to the fire marshals, Kinetix safely held around 500 people. I held ticket number #612. As a junior in high school I had already been to several concerts, but all of them had been stadium shows. This was my first club show, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

Faith No More rocked the damn club to the ground. At one point, Mike Patton was standing atop a high stack of speaker cabinets which were swaying back and forth; at another, Patton was swinging from the light bars that were mounted over the stage. Both incidents had security, club personnel, and road managers fighting to pull his ass down. Patton was wearing no shirt and a pair of shaggy gray shorts — that is, until some girl threw her panties on stage, at which point he put those on over his shorts for the band’s encore (“Epic”, followed by “War Pigs”.)

Bands that win me over in a live setting usually end up with a fan for life, and if the rest of the crowd felt like I did after the show, then Faith No More walked away with about seven hundred fans that night (Kinetix eventually got shut down for safety code violations). Always pushing the envelope and never content to ride the wave of their old successes, Faith No More’s latest release, This Is It: The Best Of Faith No More, lives up to it’s name.

Fans of the band will probably remember that after releasing 1997’s Album of the Year, Faith No More officially disbanded. FNM’s swan song (er, album) was to be 1998’s double-disc Who Cares A Lot? The Greatest Hits; that makes justifying 2003’s This Is It: The Best Of Faith No More a little hard to justify for big fans of the band. A lot has happened in the past five years, however.

Namely, nu-metal. I’ve never personally been able to make the connection between Faith No More and nu-metal. I guess it points back to the rapping verse/singing chorus of “Epic”, but even that seems a stretch to me. After listening to Faith No More’s The Real Thing, if all you walked away with was “hey, they rapped in that one song,” then you missed the point entirely. From the witty “Zombie Eaters” to the complex “Woodpecker from Mars, from the wistful “Falling to Pieces” to the loyal “War Pigs”, Epic had it all.

This Is It: The Best Of Faith No More spans 12 years and pulls 19 tracks from all seven of the band’s official releases (that number includes the two albums prior to Mike Patton’s arrival and one live album), plus a couple of tracks from the band’s maxi-singles and one from a soundtrack.

You’ll notice the CD’s title doesn’t have words like “rarities”, “obscure” or “unreleased hits” in it. The tracks presented here are basically a chronological history of the band’s videos and singles, which is ultimately the biggest drawback to the disc. Since there’s nothing new here, fans of the band already have all these songs. Half of the tracks here appear on FNM’s last release, Who Cares A Lot? The Greatest Hits. The disc does contain liner notes from the band and an introduction by Metal Edge editor Paul Gargano. Nice additions, not a reason to buy.

However, this CD is a great introduction to the band. The fact that they mention “Linkin Park cites Faith No More as a key influence” in the promo material proves that this CD is being used to introduce Faith No More to a new generation of kids. And for that reason alone, it’s a great collection. If you can’t hum at least half of the tracks listed at the bottom of this review, then by all means pick this disc up immediately.

Bottom line: A chronological romp through one of the most underrated bands of all time. People unfamiliar with the band or just discovering Faith No More should pick this up; old fans will yawn at the set list.

01. Arabian Disco
02. We Care A Lot (Slash Version)
03. Anne’s Song
04. Introduce Yourself
05. From Out Of Nowhere
06. Epic
07. Falling To Pieces
08. War Pigs
09. The Cowboy Song
10. As The Worm Turns (Live 1990)
11. Midlife Crisis
12. A Small Victory
13. Be Aggressive
14. Easy
15. Digging The Grave
16. Evidence
17. Last Cup Of Sorrow
18. Ashes To Ashes
19. The Perfect Crime

Part opera, part heavy metal, and a big part progressive metal, Epica’s debut album The Phantom Agony is an incredibly interesting conglomeration. If that sounds like your kind of bag, read on.

Many of the songs on The Phantom Agony sound like they should be performed on Broadway. Others sound like the soundtrack to a magic show, with frantic drums, female chants, and lots of chants. Never before have I heard metal and opera blended together so tastefully.

“Cry for the Moon” slowly transforms from an operatic piece with a choir-sung chorus into a progressive metal track. Simone Simons’ voice inconspicuously drops from the mix to be replaced first by an earthy growl, followed by high pitched black metal screams. This general pattern continues throughout the disc, with songs continually sliding back and forth in style and tempo between progressive metal and full blown opera. “Facade of Reality” really picks up the pace, with a string section and nearly shouting chorus keeping up with very quick and precise kick drums.

Musically, The Phantom Agony is incredible. “Seif Al Din” in particular reminds me of a cross between Dream Theater and The Project Hate in execution. I’d love to see this band live — the musicianship on this disc is phenominal, and I’ve love to see if the band can recreate it in a live setting. The production doesn’t fail the band, adding to the “important” feeling of the tracks.

While not for everybody, Epica’s The Phantom Agony is a unique blend of rock and opera that will blow you away should you give it the chance. It’s a little more dramatic and a little less fun than I normally like my music, but the grand scale on which it is presented warrants attention.

Ensoph’s Opus Dementiae is the musical equivalent of a David Lynch film. It’s disjointed, even confusing at times, and yet it repeatedly falls together in an enjoyably chaotic sort of way.

Drawing from equal parts goth, doom, and black metal, with a little pinch of progressive rock and folk music thrown in for good measure, Opus Dementiae reminds me of a dream world. If you’ve ever had one of those dreams where you’re visiting with an old friend one minute, flying over your house the next, and talking to dolphins a few minutes later, you know exactly what I’m talking about. While you’re in that dream world, everything seems to make complete sense; it’s only afterwards when talking about it that it seems so strange. Ensoph’s album is exactly the same way. While listening to the album, it makes perfect sense how a track can go from goth to black metal and back several times. Unlike bands like System of a Down and Mr. Bungle, the transition between musical styles is quick yet smooth, not abrupt.

Considering the amount of musical styles jammed into each track, the songs flow well. Most of the tracks don’t have a discernable chorus — to have one, the band would have to repeat something they’ve already done before. Don’t get too attached to a particular riff or sound while listening to Opus Dementiae — just as the riffs begin to grow on you they’re yanked away and replaced by others just as quickly. This isn’t top 40 music by any stretch of the imagination. Think of it more as a musical voyage. Like that dream world, you’re never quite sure what’s going to come next. The arrangements are consistantly intelligent and creative.

Ensoph have managed to break every musical mold I can think of. If you’re looking for something original and like My Dying Bride, Emperor, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult and The Cure, then this is for you. With vocals ranging from hushed whispers to all-out black metal screaming, this probably isn’t a disc you’ll find yourself singing along to. Give it a spin though, and I guarantee you’ll be thinking along to it.

My pal Gloomchen once used the term “Puddle of Nicklecreed” to describe the wave of safe-rock bands taking over radio airwaves everywhere. While Creed may no longer be with us, Eight Days Gone is poised to fill their shoes with the realse of their latest album, Silence to the Naysayers.

Through songs like “Today I Dreamed”, “Sell the Sky” and “Radio Love Song”, Eight Days Gone present textbook family-friendly rock tunes. Similar to Creed, the majority of the album is vocal-oriented. Neill Steinke’s voice is a perfect fit to the band, which performs quite competently as well on the disc. Those familiar with bands like Puddle of Mudd, Nickleback, Third Eye Blind and Creed will welcome Eight Days Gone to the club with “Arms Wide Open”, so to speak. Eight Days Gone manages to rock just enough distorted guitars and solos to get their CD filed under “rock”.

Overall I found Silence to the Naysayers to be unexciting, which is the nicest synonym I could find in the thesaurus for “boring”. These guys certainly have what it takes to chart with any one of the singles on the album. If you’re looking for a CD to listen to during work that’s guaranteed to offend no one, Eight Days Gone are your guys.

Despite being fans of some really heavy music, none of the staff around here are actually practicing Satan worshippers (that I know of). Sure, we all enjoy Hell related artwork, flame jobs on cars and big-tittied she-demons wearing bikini tops and daisy dukes, but when it comes right down to it none of us come home from work and sacrifice goats to the big horned one himself.

The Electric Hellfire Club however do, and they want to tell you all about it. Long before Marilyn Manson ever thought about joining Anton LaVey’s army, Thomas Thorn and co. were already marching in line behind Captain Flames himself. The Electric Hellfire Club’s songs range in subject from Hell to Satan to Satan in Hell to Satanism in general, with occasional side tangents of serial killers, murderers and drug addiction thrown in for good measure. If you’re waiting for EHC to release a family oriented Christmas album, it’ll be a cold day in … well, it’ll be a long time.

A quick history lesson; Thomas Thorn (the mastermind behind EHC) was a member of My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult for several years. When MLWTTKK began leaning away from “evil” and more towards “pop,” Thorn split and channeled his dark energy into the EHC. Over the past ten years, EHC has become known as a mediocre electronica band whose sound fell somewhere between old MLWTTKK and the Lords of Acid. Despite their demands to be taken as a serious Satanic band, their cover tunes are some of the funniest (and greatest) I’ve ever heard. Some of their covers include Sympathy for the Devil (Rolling Stones), Killing an Arab (the Cure), Highway to Hell (AC/DC), Shout at the Devil (Motley Crue), Devil Inside (INXS), the Halloween theme, Reign in Blood (Slayer), and Charles in Charge (yes, the television sitcom theme song, but dedicated to Charles Manson).

Summary up to this point – Electric Hellfire Club is a campy, techno-based Satanic band with albums titles like Burn, Baby, Burn, Satan’s Little Helpers, Unholy Roller, and Kiss the Goat. Got it?

Kiss that image goodbye. The EHC has emerged into the new millennium with a leaner, meaner sound, rooted in Swedish metal and branching out from there. Forget dance-related comparisons — the new incarnation of EHC is closer to White Zombie and Ministry than it is to MLWTTKK or Lords of Acid. Sure, Thorn is still taking the stage with horns stuck to his forehead and pentagrams flying, but he’s doing it this time around backed with guitars instead of keyboards. EHC’s latest release was Recorded at Swedens Abyss Studios with producer/engineer Tommy Tägtgren (known for his work with black metal legends Marduk, Dark Funeral, and others), and Tägtgren’s roots show through on the album’s sound.

Electronomicon, EHC’s fifth full length album, presents listeners will thirteen (of course) tracks firmly founded in hellish fun. EHC hasn’t backed off at all — if anything, their most recent collection of songs are more intense than ever. “Wired in Blood,” the opening track, explains the theory of the Electronomicon. The EHC tell stories in all their songs. “Hypochristian,” one of my favorites, talks about how people are “dammed to salvatation,” and “lost in a labyrinth of their own creation.” The songs on Electronomicon are much more advanced than EHC’s previous efforts. Instead of just coming out and asking for “Bob Larson’s head on a platter,” the lyrics seem more mature and planned out.

Electronomicon is an interesting step for the Electric Hellfire Club. Most of their old albums were synth and drum machine based, so just the foundation of live drums and guitars is a big change. The new songs still contain a lot of samples, which add to the mood and fit the songs perfectly. It’s not death metal and it’s not black metal, but it is a nice blend of hard rock and hard lyrics. Check your Bible at the door and give it a spin.

01. Into Thee Abyss
02. Wired In Blood
03. Sons Of The Serpent
04. Hypochristian
05. Stockholm Syndrome
06. Whores Of Babylon
07. Broken Goetia
08. I Dream Of Demons
09. Nordland
10. Tannhauser Gate
11. This Is The Zodiac
12. Hymns To The Fallen
13. Conjuration (Song Of Azazel)

ECW, or Extreme Championship Wrestling, is the “third” major wrestling organization, nestled pretty far behind the big two, WWF and WCW. What Extreme Wrestling lacks in ratings it makes up for in intensity. The pictures on their web site have people being body slammed through tables covered in thumb tacks and being thrown head first into a flaming pile of barbed-wire. Indeeeeeeed.

Wrestling this intense needs it’s own soundtrack, and the new ECW Anarchy Rocks CD is probably exactly what you think it would be – 12 hard rockin’ tracks from various artists that you can expect to hear on the show, on their commercials, and in their video games.

First of all, this CD is just about perfect from a marketing standpoint. Take well known bands (Static-X, Coal Chamber, Rob Zombie, Linkin Park, Cold, and Powerman 5000 to name a few) and put their hit songs on a compilation CD.

The 6 page booklet continues the cross-marketing madness that ECW is known for. Each song has a picture of a wrestler, a quote from that wrestler explaining why he or she picked that song, and then the lyrics to the song. The flip side of the booklet contains: 4 pages of ads for ECW shirt, the ECW video game, and ECW home videos, 1 page for credits and 1 page of the cover.

But enough with all the marketing – how’s the MUSIC???

First of all, ECW must be pulling in a hell of a lot more money than I thought they were to have this kind of talent list. As I mentioned above, Static-X, Coal Chamber, Rob Zombie, Linkin Park, Cold, and Powerman 5000 all make appearances. The songs … well, let’s just say there’s no ballads on this collection.

The CD is fairly evenly split between three categories: Songs you know from bands you know, songs you don’t know by bands you know, and songs you don’t know by bands you don’t know.

The first category, songs you know from bands you know, consists of Linkin Park’s One Step Closer, Powerman 5000’s Neckbone, Disturbed’s Welcome Burden, and the one song that is doomed to appear on every “hard” compilation from now until doomsday, Rob Zombie’s Superbeast.

The second category has some less popular songs, like Cold’s Just Got Wicked and Coal Chamber’s El Cu Cuy.

The rest of the disc is filled out with a couple of cover tunes, including Chimaira’s version of Balls To The Wall, and Jesse James Dupree’s version of Highway To Hell. Both are recognizable, but changed enough to be interesting. U.P.O., One Minute Silence, and F.M. Racket round out the roster.

One extra thing I discovered when I tossed this disc in my PC is an ECW video for Balls To The Wall. The video is little more than ECW wrestling bits, with a few shots of the wrestlers in the music studio singing along. If you’ve never seen ECW, this will show you why it’s called Extreme. Nothing on the front or back of the jewel case mentions anything about this, and inside there’s only a small blurb noting that this is an enhanced CD.

Overall, it’s a pretty catchy collection. If you close your eyes you can easily see wrestlers beating the crap out of each other with every one of these songs playing in the background. Each one of these tunes are the type to get you pumped up and ready for action. Unfortunately, it’s working a little too well – I almost got pulled over speeding on the way to work this morning because I had this CD cranked and had the pedal to the metal. Of course, it *IS* a Geo Tracker, which means it doesn’t have a whole lot of either to offer (pedal, or metal.)

The worst part about the whole situation is that ECW is tetering on the edge of existance. Having been dropped from TNN, their last pay per view is being advertised as “possibly the LAST ppv”, and with half of their roster moving to the WWF, the whole franchise might be going up in smoke very shortly. This just might be the last official ECW product to be released.

If you’re looking for a testosterone-filled disc that won’t make you think too hard but will get your foot tapping, check out this collection.

01. Chimaira – Balls To The Wall
02. Static-X – Head
03. Coal Chamber – El Cu Cuy
04. Rob Zombie – Superbeast (Remix)
05. Linkin Park – One Step Closer
06. Powerman 5000 – Neckbone
07. Cold – Just Got Wicked
08. UPO – Now You Want Me
09. Disturbed – Welcome Burden
10. One Minute Silence – Holy Man
11. Jesse James Dupree – Highway to Hell

In 2001, New York based rockers Dust to Dust released their self-titled debut album. Despite getting on some decent sized tours (opening for Type O Negative and Dave Navarro), response to the album was lukewarm. It didn’t take long before the band was dropped from its label (Sanctuary Records). Soon afterwards, Stu (guitar) and James (keyboards) all quit the band, leaving only Rob Traynor (bass) and Steve Tobin (drums).

Most of us would refer to this as “the band broke up,” but not Traynor! On Dust to Dust’s sophomore album Sick, Traynor plays guitar, bass, and keyboards, while still supplying vocals for the band as well. Traynor’s only accomplices are Steve Tobin behind the drum kit, and guest musician and friend Kenny Hickey (Type O Negative) performing lead guitar duty on some of the songs.

Did I mention that Rob Traynor also released this album on his own, self-funded record label, and recorded it in his own, self-funded studio? Say what you will about Traynor (which I’m about to), just don’t call the man a quitter.

The problem with Dust to Dust isn’t in the band’s performance or album’s production — both of which are excellent. Likewise, you certainly can’t fault Rob Traynor’s desire and persistance. Every thing I’ve been able to get my hands on about this guy’s story reminds me of the movie “Against All Odds.”

Unfortunately, Traynor and company have put out an extremely well produced, well performed, emotionally driven and yet somewhat boring album. It’s another hard rock album where the lead singer sings about things like addiction and abuse and drug dealers and organized religion. The title track is about “feeling helpless against things in the world that are out of your personal control.”

The music is about as innovative as the lyrics. When combined with Traynor’s vocal style, the end result sounds like a cross between nu-metal verses with 80’s hair band choruses. The riffs follow the drums and practically write themselves. I don’t think I heard a riff or a vocal that made me say, “boy, I didn’t see that coming!” Run of the mill hard rock. Only a few songs into the album, you start to get the feeling that you’ve heard this all before. A few songs later, I was sure I had.

I feel it would be a disservice to the band if I didn’t mention how good the production is on the album. Seriously. Long after Traynor and crew give up Dust to Dust, this guy should go into the production business. As a guy who’s dabbled on both sides of the mixing board, I can honestly say this is one of the best self-recorded albums I have ever heard. Ever.

Dust to Dust’s Sick isn’t a bad album, it’s just a bit uninspired. The band’s sound is as impeccable as it is generic, desperately needing some flashier guitar riffs and a slightly more unique signature sound to separate themselves from the pack. Dust to Dust have already proven that they have the determination and perseverance to make it in the business; now they just need a gentle nudge in the originality category to make it to the big time.

Tracks:
01. Rot
02. Sick
03. Think About It
04. High
05. Barely Breathing
06. Fix On
07. This Way
08. Pusher
09. Shame
10. Cursed
11. Supadupamachoman
12. Blue Sky Line