Carbonized – Disharmonization

1993 • Foundation 2000

There is some music I think I will just never understand for whatever reason, be it something too unusual or just too bad. I've listened to Disharmonization a good handful of times now and still can't find myself able to pick out much good in it.

The main reason I find this album so unappealing is that it never seems to know what it's doing or where it's headed. It starts off with some straightforward light rock sort of stuff, then jumps to some boring pseudo-gothy metal, then death metal (or is that some weird black metal/grindcore hybrid?), then some jazzy stuff, some psychedelic rock... it doesn't flow at all and nothing seems to fit together. It's possible to have erratic songwriting and have it still come out good (there are plenty of avant-garde metal and tech death bands that can do this) but not here. Riffs are mashed together haphazardly and it's impossible to follow the music along most of the time; as a result no song is memorable and once it's over I pretty much have no clue what I just listened to.

I'm not a fan of the sound in general, either. While some of the death metal riffs are decent (and the guitar and drums jive pretty well here and there), there's far more bad than good. Sometimes the guitar just spaces out, playing some very repetitive and boring lines, grinding any previously-established groove to a halt. Admittedly the drumming is quite well-done, and I like the jazzy parts, though they don't fit in with the rest of the composition well. The vocals are abysmal. Clearly they were having more fun experimenting with different effects (lots of reverb and pitch-shifting) than trying to come up with a consistent sound that fit the music. There's some growling, some bad singing, some spoken stuff, and almost none of it goes with the music well. The production is very thin, making the songs seem kind of empty. Sometimes that's a good thing, but I don't think it fits with what the band was trying to go for.

Simply put, I can't understand the appeal of this album. It tries to do too many things but it can't do any of them well, and it just sounds like a mess. I suppose for people who are really into finding the weirdest metal they possibly can, this album would be right up their alley, but I've heard weird and chaotic music done well and this just isn't near that.

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