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May 17, 2012 |
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01. Sweet Heresy
02. Threnody
03. Borealis
04. Nothing But A Shadow
05. Aurora
06. Empty The Sky
07. Crestfallen
08. Disciple
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Stop me if you've heard this one before: "5 angst ridden, outcast suburbanite kids walk into a mall..." Oh, you've heard it? Yeah, me too. According to the liner notes of "Eden In Ashes", these particular 5 life-beaten, downtrodden adolescents owe "the indigenous tribes of Ocean County Mall" for contributing to the tragically nauseating outpouring of unconvincing, misguided nonsense scattered across this sorry excuse for a metal CD. DIVINITY DESTROYED put the lame in lament with Suburbia's attempt to prove that they can be just as emotionally convictive and effectively diverse musically as any decent metal band, despite the fact that their only obvious source of inspiration is post-pubescent angst mischanneled through unconvincing depression, cornball "life is so mean and empty" lyrics, and songwriting that could have been composed by a 10 year old Hooked On Phonics flunkie with A.D.D.
Before I elaborate on the various places where I feel this band went terribly wrong, it's only fair that I express what they did right....Ok, now that that's over, we can get on with the bad. Alright, alright, that's not quite fair. Let's take the beginning 30 seconds of the first song, "Sweet Heresy", for example - the first 10 seconds is a very cool acoustic line that definitely catches your ear, and the next 20 consist of a fair but poorly produced, slow tempo muted riff, keyboards that haven't quite started to annoy you yet because they've only been playing for 20 seconds, and a mediocre death metal vocal that you're starting to think you might - just maybe - be able to handle...then comes the horrendous spoken - word style Mallcore muttering nonsense that ruins many albums, including this one.
From that point on it's an utter train wreck, with those damn vocals coming in frequently and monotonously enough to ensure that any of the very rare (and incidentally only possible redeeming quality) good riffs/passages will be sufficiently ruined and rendered completely unlistenable. The band does change tempo frequently, which is normally a redeeming quality, but in any given passage where a certain change might be considered impressive the ever-lame, whiny, off-key spoken vocals and basement production quality make them the only innocent casualty in this self-immolating disaster.
It's safe to say that their god-awful excuse for clean vocals is the plague that annihilates any hope for this album to succeed, but over-achievers of suck that they are, DIVINITY DESTROYED throw their GREEN DAY imitator some shudderingly horrible lyrics to spit at you while he's driveling in his oh-so annoying fashion. First and foremost is the chorus of "Threnody", repeated irritatingly throughout the song: "Broken dreams are the way we shall live..." which in itself effectively kills the song, but the worst is the fact that the way it is "sung" is a bald faced rip off of one of the most annoying TV theme songs in American history: "Charles in charge, of our days and our nights"...yeah, they're that bad. And not so much as a simple "Thank you, Scott Baio" in the liner notes; so ungrateful.
Listening to "Crestfallen" I'm honestly driven to tears and flooded with heart-wrenching empathy when the poor, tortured soul laments being "The life force of a lifeless force" - there's not a person on earth who can't relate to ever feeling like that in their lifeless lifeness! What the hell does that mean??? "Life force of a lifeless force" - what, like there is only death and dark and emptiness, no life at all, and you're all that keeps that alive? Without your life death would just be dead? Truly stunning words, really; if they were any more deep, they might actually make sense. And in "Borealis" (or as I would call it, "Boreallofus") when he claims, "This is a war of silence I keep losing", I can't help but find myself becoming the unofficial DIVINITY DESTROYED cheer captain, rooting for them, cheering them on in hopes that he would shut the hell up so they could finally win the war. "*clap, clap* Let's go silence, let's go! *clap, clap*"
But the introspective pinnacle of this celebration of brooding emotion and manifested sorrow through the power of poetry has got to be this metaphysically profound statement from the album's pitiful pinnacle of pungency, "Threnody": "I am the only one left to be this alone"...I just can't imagine...to be so alone that you're more alone than any other lonely person that's ever been left alone by their loneliness. Like wow, man; that's so, like, heavy or something.
Once arriving at the end of "Eden In Ashes", through the murk and haze of having heard some of the world's worst vocals and most convoluted, nonsensical lyrics ever written, I find there is redemption for DIVINITY DESTROYED - they only wasted 32 minutes of my life; much less than it felt when I was in the grips of their audio interpretation of a finger painting session at the local asylum during Lithium Lunchtime. And with the nausea residing, I ask myself between retches, "Who the hell will ever take this disposable, unconvincing nonsense seriously?" And it's then that I realize one of the band members has already answered it for me: Bassist/"vocalist" Sgt. Proft (possibly an upgraded nickname from Private Parts?), ever true to his angst-ridden, pouty image, spells it out word for word when naming those he owes his dedication and thanks to - "No One". Well said, indeed.
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