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Mahjong

Mahjong
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Accept Death

2016-01-17

665

Accept Death

Country of origin: United States

Location: Mentor, Ohio

Formed in: 2005

Genre: Sludge Metal

Lyrical themes: Suffering, Death, Hate

Release date: July 10th, 2006 Label: Retribute Records Format: CD Catalog ID: RET 029

12" Vinyl Limited Edition: Hydro-Phonic Records (USA) Cat. # HPR-230. Released in 2010. The Standard Edition on black vinyl limited to 150 copies features a fold-over style cover with a silver foil stamped logo on black wax. The Deluxe Edition on red vinyl limited to 50 copies, includes a CD of the 5 additional early tracks recently unearthed. These tracks have never been released in any format or download. Also look for Turntable Toy No.3 Hypnotic Disc with this deluxe release. The Deluxe Edition cover logo is stamped in Crimson Foil as well. Recorded at Conquistador Studios, April 2006.

Band members

fot. Corey Bing Drums. Born 1974 in Litchfield, Ohio. When he was 15/16, he used to play in a cover band (Misfits, Metallica, Black Sabbath, etc.) with friends from high school.

fot. Matthew J. Rositano Bass, Guitars, Vocals.

fot. Scott Stearns Guitars. Aliases: Wizard, Wizardfool, Piss Wizard. Scott has also been a member of Die Hard (pre-Integrity, hardcore band from Cleveland, Ohio). He is also a talented painter and graphic designer. Founder of Goat Skull Records.

Guest/Session

Steve Makita Vocals (Track 5)

Miscellaneous staff

Cole Martinez Recording

Apparently there's a new philosophical/ideological stream in town that I've never heard of, claiming that nothing you say counts unless repeated several times. Driven by this logic, the key/former members of Fistula formed this side-project, with a new moniker yet not even a slight change in style, apart from tuning the guitars a little bit lower. So basically, if you're familiar with Fistula's work that's earlier than "We, the Beast" you can have your conclusions made right now and beat the hell out of here, yet a hunch tells me the majority of you have never actually heard neither of Fistula nor Accept Death, so you might want to stick with me a little more. What Accept Death trying to do on this album is similar in essence to the generic and mandatory jail movie scene in which the new in-mate beats the living piss out of the most scary looking dude out there with a food tray, to establish his status and avoid becoming the jail-bait - sporting an ever-menacing and ever-grating sludge doom metal sound along with a complimentary and fairly decent production by the genre's standards, it's apparent that this band weren't pursuing for any substance (apart from the illegal kinds of, maybe) in their music, and are only here to trash you out of your puny body and mind by the sheer bestiality and, with the lack of a better word, "obesity" of their music - their guitars are fat and tuned down low, their use a moderate to slow tempo, although a bit faster than other doom and sludge doom acts, with insurmountably drive-centered and quite creative drum work along with and occasional fast parts (on the same breath I'd take the opportunity to credit the drummer for pulling off a fairly credible and decent performance on this album) and rely mostly on prolonged and continuous droning of open chords and very basic and daft melodic structuring and progression (to the extent the inclusion of "melody" and Accept Death in a single sentence feel like an abomination) to accomplish their goals and captivate the listener's attention, just almost as you'd might picture a extremely fat man prancing around. Now, there's the seemingly undeniable fun factor right there, and the good news are that it works. The bad news, sadly, are that it doesn't work for long. While the good parts of this album might resemble a fucked-up-in-a-good-way version of Crowbar, the prominent portion of the album sounds like - and I am dead serious - the elected outtakes (read: blatant rip-offs) off Slipknot's self-titled album. Now, being compared to a mallcore band, let alone being presented as the inferior in that comparison, would usually do enough, sadly it's my smallest qualm with this album - the hell with ripping Slipknot off, how about repeatedly ripping yourself off as well, and moreover - getting gradually worse in that? So OK, we have the first track, a really decent one to say the truth, that's thoroughly based on simple yet powerful grooves and not power chords and really gives his title - "I'm Sick" - an additional meaning... "Nah, too accessible, let's try the same song but dumb it down a little - let's put more emphasis on power-chords, and simplify the melodies a little". So far so good, but imagine the process being repeated over and over again - at the end of the road you get an album that that revolves around a very small amount of thoroughly regurgitated key elements, and at the same time begins with sweet groovy lines et cetera and downgrades to the last song, "Kill Everyone", that three minutes into it the only "riff" you'd hear is a repeated strumming of a single power chord, that eventually changes into a different, somewhat melodic riff that would accompany you for the remaining 4 minutes of it - but I assume you'd be forced to take my word for it, since you've given up on this album around the fourth track, because you couldn't take it anymore. This is not a work you'd expect from a bunch of otherwise accomplished peers (all of the members make music for quite a while already and with a wide variety of bands), in fact, "Accept Death" (the album) is probably what happens when creative minds go to sleep. In all seriousness - "minimalist" is one of the band's genre tags on their MySpace page, and I totally get what the term means - all except how and when exactly did it become a disguise, or an excuse if you will, to try and market something that was probably rejected by their main bands and shouldn't have left the development hell in the first place. As if aware of their weak spots, they frequently throw in wild cards like the aforementioned fast or melodic parts to keep things a little more interesting and usually keep the songs short so you won't totally lose it, but a. it doesn't really work, since you'll find the task of fishing the scattered few good parts out of the putrid pile a little too annoying, and b. it doesn't really fit into their primary intention of coming out as "bad-asses", ending up sounding as a confused mess. If I'm at debunking the alleged-badass charade already, I'd like to add the following: Accept Death are not the first and only band to tune their guitars down as low as G standard, but they're definitely the only band to do so on a 6 string guitar while seemingly using a standard set of strings for it. Now, every guitar player that's familiar with gauges or tried to toy around with tunings would beat their heads against the wall right now, but in case you aren't one of them, let me just tell you that a guitar tuned that low without the proper preparations done would go out of tune spontaneously during the span of even a single note or a chord played, so imagine what happens when you actually try to play riffs in that condition. But we are badass, we don't give a fuck and it's all intentional, right? Well it sounds like shit. And there's one thing I'm certain of - no music is made with the intention to sound like shit, even with "sludge" as their genre description, and I can think of a myriad of sludge and even drone doom acts that I might not enjoy or be remotely interested with, but at least I'd be able to listen to them without being lobotomized and/or shell-shocked prior to it - hell, I'd rather Fistula ten times over every day. This is more than ridiculous - given the band's countless experiments with groove and melody throughout the album, as basic and raw as they might be, that eventually end up sounding like a choir of molested cats most of the time - you really thought you'd get away with that? To round the review into a full circle, and as I've pretty much covered up the inputs of most of the band members in one way or another and there are no signs of the presence of the bass guitar in a radius of a thousand miles, I'd like to point out the downright terrible vocals as well, that consist pretty much of half assed growls and high yells the upholding of which for longer than three syllables seems to be a big issue. Overall: If you like your sludge metal extremely minimal and mind numbing, you might enjoy this one quite a lot, but then - you might enjoy train spotting as well; otherwise you'll find that this album takes too much time to grow on you, never sticks to your mind when it does, and gets saved by the bell more than you'd like it to be. As a debut, "Accept Death" is, well, acceptable, but given the band's currently indefinite status and lack of members, I hope their follow-up would be more focused and thought through (and I'll take "I Pray, God Fails" as a guarantee) and they won't skip the tutorials by Lazarus Blackstar again.