SDMetal.org icon Brian asked me to “review an album you hate lol”…, perhaps to provide some balance to the reviews on this site. Unlike spinless ass-sucker metal review sites that shamelessly replace so-so reviews posted on their site with vacuous handjob reviews1 mere hours later (lest they annoy the record labels that feed them infinite free promos)…, I believe the point of folks posting reviews online is to spread the word of what rules – and what sucks. If folks disagree, that’s cool – intelligent debate is always welcome! But when a review site posts nothing but “This album is totally awesome sauce!!!1!” reviews, it’s credibility winds up looking and smelling like the contents of a blue Porta-Potty on a hot Summer day at the end of a three-day metal festival.
With that ranty nonsensical intro out of the way, what do I have sizzling on the ForemanGrill for some medium- to medium-well done flaming? A flaccid “We need to have something to sell at the merch table” E.P. from a band that has long been near and dear to my heart – and somewhat breaks my heart with this cash-grab and frankly throwaway release.
Pounder was first released in 2015 to tie into the band’s 30th anniversary comeback + “Final Tour” junket.
Even with the rather cool looking nuclear mushroom cloud album art, I ignored it at the time. But when a remaster of this popped up on my social media(s) as a “new” release with new boring-as-fuck artwork on Christmas Day 2021, I finally got around to giving it a spin.
The title track and “The Blind Follow (aka “Lies”) are both fairly routine N.A. offerings, complete with John Connelly’s trademark trebley yelping. He’s an old man now, but at least his barky vocals still have that dangerous edge that has always made Nuclear Assault a bit different. These two songs are okay for what they are, but I can’t shake the feeling that these were recorded in widely separate studios (pro or home) and later ProTool’ed into distinct songs. Since these tracks pre-date the stay-at-home COVID Times, sloppy engineering and mixing from a band of this caliber is inexcusable. And to think: this somewhat sloppy mess is the “2021 Remaster”, so what the fuck does the original 2015 release sound like?
Clumsiness at the soundboard aside, the last two tracks are where the rubber really meets the road here – and to keep with that analogy, where this somewhat rickety beater with a faded “Hang The Pope!” bumper sticker and expired New York license plates throws a rod and breaks down in a hurry.
Analog Man In A Digital World
“Analog Man In A Digital World” is the two minutes and thirty nine second equivalent of “Old Man Yells At Cloud”. Specifically, John Connelly telling kids to put away their cell phones, ripping on them for being connected to the Internet, lambasting their choice of cell phone vs. the possible prospects of talking to a girl (because “nerds don’t get chicks”, amirite?), and so on. It’s all very “old man Luddite” – very much “Get off my lawn you kids with your WorldWideWeb cordless telephones!”. I’m sure some folks my age (aka 51) and a bit older are fully expected to jump in on this rather pathetic little tech hate-parade – ala “Yeah, you tell `em John! Get those delicate snowflake kids not even old enough to ‘Never Forget 9/11!” off their phones and into the pit!!”. But for me, I ain’t having it. Nothing says “cultural irrelevance” more than old farts complaining about younger generations. The Nuclear Assault guys are all roughly around my age, and thus not of the Baby Boomer Generation. But in this case, posting a #okayboomer hashtag in the comments section for this particular YouTube track is not inappropriate.
Died In Your Arms
The last track of this somewhat tedious E.P. is also the track with the most amount of cringe. The lyrics are kinda cool. Confronting a home break-in and fighting the intruder to the death – but delivered in a weird mixed BPM quasi-ballad style. The tempo shifts seem somewhat random, and the snippets of cool solo’ing are roughly cropped and intermixed with Connelly’s very ragged crooning. If I had to guess, I would say this was was cobbled together from a dozen or so musical and lyrical ideas that the band has had floating around for a while. It’s a song that sorta “could work”…, but in my opinion, doesn’t.
Highly questionable production and lyrical choices aside, the rest of the band sounds reasonably tight.
There’s little that Dan Liker has touched that hasn’t impressed me, bass-wise. The same goes for Glenn Evans on drums (yes, I’m one of those weirdos that even liked his “C.I.A” solo project, for example).
But the overall tone of this E.P. just seems off in my opinion. It was clearly slap-dashed together in 2015 to have “something new for the fans!” for their “final” shows back then…, and the Christmas 2021 remaster of this is very much a “But why?” for me.
For Nuclear Assault completists only.
1 FWIW, the new Trivium has some mighty tasty things going on. Not everything on their new album is my style, but it’s still far and away more interesting than this mess of an E.P!
Great review Todd. I just listened to “Pounder” and it’s very incoherent. It very much feels like a rehearsal with loose timing and everything (minus the vocals) feel distant. I am with you on C.I.A., that was a great project.