Terrorizer - Darker Days Ahead
Review: Legendary band puts out followup album, not content to rest on its laurels; too bad, as they would have left this world heroes instead of burnouts. Like the Dead Kennedys or later Napalm Death, this album mistakes appearance for substance: it fits the form of alienated music, loud choruses and slashing ripples of turgid riffs, but it has nothing to motivate it or its listeners toward any change in state.
Resembling a warm bath, it slides easily onto the stereo and plays for most of an hour, but when the CD glides to a stop it is as if an air conditioner or heater clicked off one of its bi-hourly cycles. The atmosphere has changed, but nothing dramatic has occurred. The listener is subjected to this tepid ambience in the expectation of what punk, grindcore and metal have always offered -- a step outside the predictable, tedious and failing world of modern society -- but instead what we get is a modern society viewpoint, a representation with no power to it. When the listener is washing dishes, or fixing furniture, it is inoffensive background noise, but one could not sit down to appreciate it and come away with any comment other than "It was there." The earlier work by this band crushes this like a lost eyeball in an operating room in hell.