DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY
Devour the Power
Black Market/Metal BladeTrack listing:
01. The Summoning
02. Hang the Vermin
03. Gods of War and Open Sores
04. Ripped Apart By the Juggernaut of Fornication
05. Battle Cry
06. Eternal Voyage of the Geishmal Undead
07. The Beast That Cannot Be Fed
08. Mutilated Cranial Orifice
09. Seduced by the Locrian Temptress
10. Hellfire
11. Bring On the Exodus
Something in the Nashville area reservoir? A few too many lead paint chips peeled and eaten off windowsills as babies? The last band from Tennessee to pop up on the radar was the delightfully off-the-wall LOOK WHAT I DID, and now we're graced with the presence of DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY, another irritating moniker saddled upon another kickass, irreverent band who take nothing — including themselves — seriously.
DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY (seriously, that's giving my word processor fits. How about DDD or 3D from here on in?) are a little easier to pigeonhole, though. If you want to completely oversimplify things, call 'em the American CHILDREN OF BODOM — keyboards, fruity squealing guitar trills, croaking death 'n roll vocals, and the same snotty swagger and leather underwear as our favorite guilty-pleasure Finns. You could compare them to 3 INCHES OF BLOOD, too, in their are-they-kidding-or-aren't-they silliness and over-the-top demeanor. And like those bands, catchiness rules even more than bullet belts (okay, almost as much) – just wait till you're singing, with lusty abandon, "ripped apart by the juggernaut of fornication!"
Cheese? Yes, great rancid Wisconsin wheels of it. But it sounds massive, and it's a good time, and if you have an ounce of fun left in you, you can totally overlook the fact that it's tremendously goofy and blatantly unoriginal. It's maybe a bit more black metal in places than rock and roll, and there are enough straightforward metal moments to leaven the sweet-tooth rot of the more BODOM-like passages and occasional keyboard solos.
D TO THE D TO THE D will scratch your melodic death metal itch in a positively European way, even as some of the band's post-ironic American smirking smartassery shines through (or maybe it's just that picture of the drummer, nascent beer gut slopping over his leather pants as he wields both a spiked armband and nerdy glasses, that's giving me that impression). With this as a starting point, it'll be quite interesting to see where these guys go from here — they're perhaps a little too derivative at this point to be truly essential listening, but they're definitely a good time.