Persistent, (Among The Living - Anthrax)

Member Name: mpeh

Product:	Among The Living - Anthrax
Date:	21/05/01 (31 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: err

Disadvantages: see text

Most of the things I review I like. That's why I review them, to tell everyone out there how mush I like stuff. Not this. I am a metal fan, and rock, I like stuff from Rainbow and Deep Purple, Queen, Iron Maiden (well most of it) through to thrash and even goth and black metal. One of my biggest gripes with the heavier end of the rock/ metal market is the appalling vocals so often and unnecessarily used in 99% of the songs, ok it's my biggest gripe, definately. Well this album has better vocals than that.

There I've said something positive now on with the review: This is awful, the music is unoriginal and the lyrics are weak, there is completely gratuitous swearing. Don't take me wrong I'm not objecting to swearing I'm a university student so I'm pretty much desensitized to it but I do find people placing expletives into otherwise perfectly rational sentences in what appears to be a random fashion at first amusing and then, after a while (about 10 seconds ususally) annoying.

Details; ok, the music is of the same area as Iron Maiden, that kind of effect on the guitars and drums and vocals. I'd like to apologise to Maiden for mentioning them in a review about Anthrax, the similarity is in what was trying to be achieved NOT in the outcome. Anthrax's vocals sound like Axel Rose's whining on a bad day (the same apologies should be extended to Axel Rose as to Maiden), with a low quality microphone, plugged through a high pitch distortion pedal. Seriously though the vocals aren't very musical, they are half sung, half talked/shouted and don't fit with th emsic as so much as ride over the top of it. There are patches in some of the songs where the vocals slide into place but these are noticeable as the rest of it doesn't fit together at all.

The drumming is fairly standard. Those of you who've read my other music reviews will know I place drumming high on my list of priorities for a good alb
um, my favourite songs tend to have a strong drummer behind them. I'm not knocking the ability of Anthrax's drummer, he may be very good but on this album he isn't allowed to demonstrate his talents. I always feel sorry for drummers in a lot of the bands we see now a days (and through most of the 90's in fact) where they have to play a simple little things over the top of a simple beat so as not to draw any attention to themselves and to only sound like pop music. You can hear a lot of them wanting to lash out and actually drum, the girl from the Corrs is one, she sits there behind her huge drum kit and goes boom, shh, boom, shh or whatever and then every now ad then lets rip with a little roll and a crash or something and then the next verse starts and she's back to boom shh, boom, shh she's beggin to have to do something requiring the smallest amount of concentration, or effort, or variation. Well seeing as Anthrax are a metal band (I use both words loosely here) and this album is NOT pop music the drumming isn't pop musicish. It's louder, and faster and not any better at all.

I've read other reviews of these guys and seen fans telling people that they are good musicians. Listening to this I find it disturbing that this may be true. I can't make up my mind whether it's worse bad musicians thinking they're brilliant, getting together and crashing this out or good musicians trying to create an album and ending up with this, deliberately. Eugh I shudder to think of it. This has everything wrong with it that is stereotypically wrong with light metal. The film about Spinal Tap (a spoof metal band) had better music than this, by a long way. Each song is different, another positive thing I suppose, there is variation in the sound but only in so much as each song is bad slightly differently. The vocals don't change much but the riffs do change musically. The guitars are relatively high pitched and plugged throu
gh the same whiney distortion pedal I joked about the vocals being linked to, but this time I'm serious they are whiney and have the humming distortion effect that annoys the hell out of me.

I've heard these guys compared to Slayer. Quite an illustrative comparison: Slayer have the same type of sound as Anthrax but are heavier, more musical, the vocals are much screamier, if you know what I mean, and annoying in a different way. The guitars are on the same type of distortion but tuned down (or normally even) which reduces the whineing humming quality.

Ok so I've had my bitch, sorry but don't buy this albu. As a disclaimer I'd like to say that there are probably a lot of people out there who like this album, I have no wish to offend them whatsoever. I'm open minded (if a little cynical) and personally would tell you not to waste your time listening to this but, being open minded, would say try before you buy, this isn't up everyone's street so don't fork out only ot be dissapointed. I was.

Summary: