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By JEFF MAKI
Iscariot's Lifeless Design (567 Records) is about as close to thrash metal as possible in 2006. With harsh vocals—and that’s an understatement—resembling Phil Anselmo or Testament’s Chuck Billy, Iscariot delivers a strong but predictable debut. The band will not break any new ground, but like so many others churning out material like to this, the effort should be appreciated.
One of the main problems with modern metal, or “metalcore,” lies not in the vocal department but in the lyrics. These bands, Iscariot included, are fast, brutal and feature outstanding metal musicians. The problem time in and time out is the lack of anything to make any one of these bands stand out. Fans need a pissed off lyric or memorable part of a song to shout out at shows. There are about 150 frontmen in extreme metal that are interchangeable. The lead singer for It Dies Today or A Love Ends Suicide could be singing here and there would be no difference. We need good lyrics, dammit, and we need them now. Look at the best and most successful new metal bands in recent years: Lamb of God, Shadows Fall, Bleeding Through. They all have strong frontmen and memorable lyrics that make them instantly recognizable.
With all that being said, Lifeless Design has some great guitar work, pummeling double-bass and, as I said, is more thrash metal then metalcore. Fans of any of the mentioned bands should be able to get into this. When the smoke clears on this new wave of American heavy metal, just like anything else, only the strong will survive. It remains to be seen which category Iscariot will fall into when that time comes.
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