Time Signature Watch me rule...

Genre: groove metal

Back in the 1990s a band I was in was given the opportunity of warming up for this band at a live concert. I remember being totally blown away by how professional they were, how skilled musicians they were and how good a live band they were. I also remember the disappointment when I bought their album and listened to it.

There are a number of good tracks on it, to be sure, and the four first tracks are actually really good - especially the opening track "The Primate" - as they all combine groove and melody in a way that can only be described as highly original (although the Pantera influences are there). The tracks "Fuck", "Raw", "Parasite", "Watch Me Rule", "Bleeding", "Murder in a Box", and "5-6-7-8" strike me as being quite lackluster and, most of all, due to the emphasis on noise, they lack sucstance and texture. That being said, "Bleeding" and "Murder in a Box" do contain some nice groove parts and certainly serves as the strongest of the weakest tracks. The next tracks "Ignorance" and "Dead", while still emphasizing noise, are much stronger, I think and much more successful in balancing noise and groove.

I'd recommend this album to fans of groove metal because of the first handful of tracks and the last two tracks; fans of rawer metalcore and hardcore might also like it.