by Scott Albright
Daily Lobo
Hardcore metal band Every Time I Die explodes with blood-pumping music and screaming lyrics in their new album, Gutter Phenomenon.
Vocalist Keith Buckley yells and sometimes sings over the 11-track CD that combines thrash-like guitar riffs from Jordan Buckley and Andrew Williams with the pounding drum beats of Mike Novak. The album drives itself with high-intensity music that can be labeled death metal, hardcore metal, or just, metal.
It should be mentioned that the album is not just screaming and yelling. Keith Buckley really does change his voice with a variety of high-pitched belches and puts his voice on the line when he makes his lyrics intelligible by singing.
In the song "Champing at the Bit," there are several points where the intensity of the track is built up until the band unleashes high velocity machine-gun-like guitar and drum sets. The synchronization of the two guitars, drums and vocals provides a barrage of complex sounds that fill the senses with pure energy.
In "Guitared And Feathered," crashing drum sounds fill the ears with a combination of grungy guitar riffs and distorted vocals. A nice change from the thumping drums and thrashing guitars is included in this song when Keith Buckley sings a chantlike filler toward the middle of the track.
Most of the songs on this album are fast-paced, but several tracks include a stop-and-go method that keeps the listener wondering when the music is going to take off. Several effects that are included add an industrial feel to the album's overall sound.
In the song "L'astronaut," the band may have used electronic crickets on acid to create a metallic background noise. The vocals are often overlapped with a filterlike ambient effect, and filler noises like the clapping in "Pretty Dirty" add variety to the hardcore metal sound.
Every Time I Die has an aggressive feel and could be said to sound angry, but it's not clear if the message they are sending is of a punk nature or not. It's difficult to make any sense of the screaming lyrics even though they are provided on the inside album cover.
Perhaps there's a deep message that only true followers of this band can understand, or maybe the lyrics were just written off the top of the head with no real purpose except to provide entertainment.
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In any case, Gutter Phenomenon truly puts out an intense sound that can be enjoyed by the masses of head-banging rockers.
