Schizo – Rotten Spiral

[nyrating]

18th March 2016 Markus Falkenberg Album Reviews 0

Schizo’s “Rotten Spiral” is a difficult album to describe. One can hear that the band is not without talent, but this talent is not put to good use, at least not consistently. You can already see, or rather hear this with the first song. It starts with an acoustic intro that makes one curious for what is to come, after that you get a nice guitar riff and everything builds up to a very bombastic start, but then you realise that the main riff gets overplayed thereby giving the song a monotonous and uninteresting twist. The song is still not without its merits and shows a certain talent, but it is not a gem either. The same can be said about most other songs on the album. You get a good beginning, but then comes a guitar riff that gets overplayed and the song ends up with a boring twist.

At this point you might wonder why I called the album “difficult to describe”. This is due to the fact that I really meant it when I wrote that the band is not without talent. The riffs are not bad as such for instance and maybe Schizo will even figure out a way as to how to employ them better in the future. Also, there are two surprisingly good songs on the album. The first one is “Neurotic Propaganda” with its harsh intro and its similarly brutal guitar solos. I have to admit that I really enjoyed that one. More of that, please! The next one is “Deathwire” with its explosive intro and a vocalist who seems to have enjoyed himself quite a lot here. *I* sure did when I listened to this particular song. Not even the aforementioned “repetitive riff” problem can drag this particular song down which speaks volumes of its quality.

Be that as it may, two good songs on an entire album cannot justify a good rating. This is also why I have no choice but go with four devils here. The album is simply sub-par despite the aforementioned two good songs.