|
By RYAN MAVITY
Hmmm. That’s what I ended up saying after I heard the new album from Mithras. “So that’s Mithras, eh?” I said to myself. After 45 minutes of relentless kick drums, Cookie Monster vocals, a few scary movie effects and some decent guitar work, that’s it.
Well, needless to say, I didn’t much get into this record very much. It is, to me at least, not very good. The songs sound the same and are all titled in that same pretentious progressive style so beloved by emo groups and ‘70s prog rockers. With titles like “The Journey and the Forsaken,” “Under the Three Spheres,” “Into Black Holes of Oblivion” and “Thrown Upon the Waves,” I wondered if I had accidentally left the world of metal and entered that of Ernest Hemingway book titles. Alas, it is a metal album, done loudly, by two guys who look like the sort of fellows that hit you up for change and cigarettes in the city. That would not be a terrible thing for your average metal album, but Mithras’ songs rarely get more complex than “play double kick drums as fast as possible, add guitar solo, scream loudly. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.” I kept waiting for these English lads to pull another trick from their sleeves, but no such luck.
This wouldn’t be a problem if the band was engaging or rocked consistently. Hell, I don’t ask a lot from my metal bands. But once you’ve seen Mithras’ bag of tricks, you’ve seen them all, and the lyrics and musicianship doesn’t save the album.
I will say that the album’s press kit is wonderful reading. It takes a vivid imagination or lots of available drugs to write lines like, “Prepare for the sound of ascension, light-speed retribution on the so-called experts and anonymous critics of this dimension and the next … prepare for the deepest and most unsettling journey into the Mithras universe yet!” Perhaps these guys should abandon metal and write the next fake Grindhouse trailers. As for retribution of the anonymous critics like myself? After listening to this record, Mithras can consider themselves avenged. |
