xDeathstarx

The Triumph

[1/5]

There’s so much wrong here. It starts with this California octet unbelievably and pointlessly employing twice as many stand-alone vocalists as guitarists, continues with the sound of this supposedly re-mastered version of their 2004 debut, and ends with this re-release doing everything in its power to spoil the positive strides of their last proper album, 2007’s We Are The Threat. The drums sound like a combination of cardboard boxes and typewriters; the guitars were apparently mic’d using some combination of tin can and twine; and the Neanderthal naïveté during “Scars” and “Represent” makes one wonder whether there are protruding caveman foreheads under those sideways-cocked, flat-brimmed ball caps. The xDeathstarx of today are an infinitely better band, one whose painful past doesn’t need reliving. (FACEDOWN) Kevin Stewart-Panko