ANIMOSITY - 'Animal' (Blackmarket Activities/Metal Blade) SONS OF AZRAEL – 'The Conjuration of Vengeance' (Ironclad/Metal Blade) SEVERE TORTURE – 'Sworn Vengeance' (Earache) KHANN – 'Tofutopia' (Blackmarket Activities/Metal Blade) RATING: 5/10

By JEFF MAKI

All of these up-and-coming bands' new releases share a common interest" to seek out, destroy and be as extreme as humanly possibly. To be fair, each band incorporates slightly different styles and influences, and tries to stand out from the crowd. Each brings brutality to the table: the technical death metal of Severe Torture, tempo-changing deathcore of Animosity, the shrieking vocals and onslaught of Sons of Azrael and the all-out insanity of noisemongers Khann. However, these bands can be tied together in several ways.

These bands are about as fucking evil as evil gets, save for maybe Behemoth or select black metal bands, and are all highly skilled extreme metal musicians. But even with skill and precision timing, they remain primal at their cores. This is both good and bad. Rapid-fire drumming, venomous riffs, sick lyrics and guttural, shrieking vocals dominate these albums. The usual nuances are also present; songs dispense a strong effort but never really reach any certain destination and also fail to distinguish themselves from the next. Each band easily could be mistaken for two dozen other extreme metal bands. Despite the head-pounding you'll no doubt receive, all of the albums leave little, if anything, to latch on to. In the case of Animosty and Khann, songs take off in 20 different directions. Basically, these bands embody everything that is good in metal right now, but also expose the genre's most problematic flaws: a lack of any significant songwriting skills and originality.

Urging metal fans not to buy these albums is not my intention here, but take it as you will. There are things to like about each of the four albums, but nothing immediately grabs you by the balls and makes you an instant fan. Maybe I'm getting too old (I just turned 31; is that old?), but I need more than sheer brutality and incomprehensible noise. Of the four, I suppose Severe Torture actually has songs; they're just not that good. Bands need to concentrate more on songs than meaningless racket. I always have felt this style is overrated and it's time to start weeding it out.