EVOLUTION
SPITFIRE
LINKS:
pissingrazors.com
One would hope that an album entitled Evolution would display a band’s growth, but Texas quartet Pissing Razors’ latest effort proves that they still have a way to go…quite a long away to go.
The lead track “No Way Out” kicks off with a lot of promise. The opening riff is ferocious and new vocalist Andre Acosta belts it out with all his might, but somehow after that it all deteriorates…quickly.
Cool echo-effects start “Fall Away” and then it all goes down hill. There is no cohesiveness at all. The time signature changes are sloppy. Guitarist Matt Difabia and bassist Rick Valles struggle with trying to breathe life into their parts. The drummer has resorted to bashing instead of drumming and Acosta, as hard as he tries, sounds somewhat forced. Acosta tries to add in a Phil Anselmo-esque shriek at the end, but that too sounds forced and awkward.
The individual segments of “Hanging on the Cross” could stand on their own as separate songs, but as is it’s not much more than a directionless hodgepodge. There are some monstrous riffs and some way cool grooves, but collectively it sounds disjointed. The drumming is, some times, too elaborate and at other times too pensive. Acosta’s vocals are the only half-decent contribution, but his cohorts make him sound worse than he actually is.
By the time we get to “Threshold”, Evolution has gone awry. Again, Pissing Razors have some awesome riffs to work with, but they still haven’t figured out how to string them together. Momentum is another problem. Every guitar groove is followed by this anti-climactic drum-fill that sucks out all of the life in the song. Things end in hurricane-like fury, but it’s not enough to resuscitate “Threshold”.
On “Two Face Devil”, the band has mutated into a bizarre cross-breed of Pantera and Limp Bizkit. The swarming bees guitar effect, in the intro, is an interesting concept, but Difabia’s execution is weak. The rest of the song is flat. The riffs are boring. The vocals sound manufactured; Acosta’s rapping is laughable. And the drumming is bland.
“Replacing the Day” is a lumbering monstrosity of a song.
The outro is the title track in Spanish. The English version didn’t move me one way or the other, but this version -- because of the colorfulness of the Spanish language -- adds a touch of vibrancy. Reworking your title track in another language isn’t the most creative way to end an album, though.
This is not a good album, but Pissing Razors is not a bad band. There are snippets of guitar and bass riffs and fragments of drum-work and vocals that make for powerful, groovin’ songs. This band knows what is good music. Perhaps it’s of lack of focus. Whatever the case may be, I hope to see true evolution on their next album; however, I am doubtful.
---- By Eric V. White