RIKETS

All American Death Cult

Burnhill Union

3 / 10

Track listing:

01. It's Only Gonna Get Worse
02. Program the Dead
03. Designer Drug Hell
04. Vicious
05. The Murder
06. Allison
07. House of Lies
08. End of My Suffering
09. Cry Little Sister
10. Sold Me Out
11. Sew Your Eyes

Remember when people thought AMERICAN HEAD CHARGE and SCRAPE and PROFESSIONAL MURDER MUSIC were a good idea? Me too, but a few more therapy sessions and I should have it blocked from my mind. That is, unless bands like Cleveland's RIKETS insist on dredging up the worst, most overproduced excesses of 1999-era hard rock, Charles Manson samples, NINE INCH NAILS loops and all, in some misguided attempt to either fast-forward a new nostalgia trip or convince us that DROWNING POOL and STATIC-X were the high-water mark of modern heavy music.

I mean, this sounds like it was recorded ten years ago and locked in a time capsule to remind us future punters that we're better off. It's all here: the electro-loops, the guy-who-can't-really-sing doing the "intense" whispery verse and then the buildup to the big screamy multilayered chorus, the groovy-robot STATIC-X riffs and dumbed-down chugga-chug like 2000-era hardcore watered down for that annoying crop of "extreme" hard rock radio stations that cropped up just in time to break SALIVA and then die off. RIKETS would have been a generic, but acceptable, second- or third-tier band back when this shit was in vogue; now, it's just a baffling misfire, the sort of act you expect to still see winning battles-of-the-bands in tiny rust belt towns, but not getting signed and promoted as the next big thing.

Mediocre and clinging to a dated sound? That's a lethal one-two punch. Stale angst-o-metal with nothing to recommend it.

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