Deadwalk - Scandalous

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Hey, guess what, Deadwalk fucking hates you. That's right, and the singer tells you so in the very first track, which is inexplicably called "Prom Night". In fact, that's all he tells you. It's the only lyric (well, to be fair, he does add an extra "fuck" towards the end) and it's repeated several times over one cord. This is pretty much par for the course with this album. Scanalous is full of breakdowns, which sounds like it might be a good thing, but virtually every one of them is one chord - the same cord on every song - repeated in various styles of clipped chugs. It begs the question, why the hell does this band have two guitarists? I actually started to get frustrated with these guys the more I listened to this album. There is a glaring lack of effort and dynamic, on everyone's part, throughout the record.

It's common concensus that a vocalist can often make or break a band. In this case, no question, it's the latter. It sounds like he has no breath control and, to compensate, they mixed the vocals in such a way that the first word of every line overlaps the end of the last word of the line that preceded it. It sounds like he fills his lungs to capacity and breaths everything out at once in a raspy, angry voice. The only standout track might be "8 mm", which starts off with pummelling double bass and one of the few decent riffs on the record. But it all goes to shit as soon as the vocals come in and after the first forty-four seconds, they enter the first of two so-called breakdowns, although the second actually has two chords instead of just the one.

I have to say that I might be a little more in to this record if it wasn't for the awful vocals, but only a little. Vocals aside, the music is, for the most part, tactless and oafish. Unless that kind of thing really floats your boat (and I honestly can't imagine why it would), don't waste your time.

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