7000 Dying Rats Season In Hell

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Reviewed by: Cory   //   Published: 3/13/2007

7000 Dying Rats can't seem to make up their collective minds about just about anything. Their lineup has been unstable since their inception with only their vocalist returning for their latest full-length, the first in five years. There also seems to be a bit of confusion about just how seriously these guys take their work in 7000 Dying Rats. Guitarists Steve Rathbone and D.J. Barraca, both of Lair of the Minotaur, seem unsure of whether or not they should be wasting any of their creativity on the albums' riffs and the uneven guitar work is evidence. Even conceptually, these guys can't decide what kind of music they should play, with jokey interludes and assorted covers ending up alongside legitimate metal tracks of various styles and speeds. The band have described themselves as "garbage grind" and while the moniker isn't completely accurate, the two words separately could be used to accurately describe 95% of this album's tracks.

Sprinkled amidst the sloppy violin tracks, cheesy raps and miserably simplistic mellow rock ballads, there's about fifteen or twenty minutes of really solid metal on this album. There are even a few tracks that end up interesting despite the band's best intentions, such as the noise instrumental "Alzheimerz." Unfortunately for every really great moment this disc contains, there are two truly miserable ones. The drawn out introduction of "Death Hammer of the Bearded Ones" wouldn't even fly if the band were serious, despite the furious grinding that ensues afterward. The disc's many samples wear increasingly thin on repeated listens. AC/DC & Kiss-styled rocker "Rock N Roll Weapon" isn't altogether terrible but it sticks out like a sore thumb and gets inundated by sampled noises before its cacophonous finale. Even innocuously forgettable tracks like the mercifully brief "Baby Crusher" ended up annoying me because they were simply unnecessary. A terrible techno cover of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" is followed by one of the disc's best tracks, "The Wound (Gapeth Open)." There's even a four minute track featuring a disappointing contribution from Neurosis' Scott Kelly.

Bottom Line: What's the point There's nothing particularly amusing about 7000 Dying Rats' brand of comedy and there's not a whole lot to genuinely enjoy despite the abundance of talent involved. This is just an all-around misguided attempt at mixing metal and jokes that falls flat at nearly every turn. They may have been around for over ten years, but 7000 Dying Rats need to leave the comedic metal to Crotchduster and focus on making music that someone actually cares about.

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