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Unburied: Murder 101

Certain bands draw on shocking themes, lyrics, or images to get attention, to fight against the middle-class values, or simply to flaunt their bad taste on an unsuspecting public. My guess is that Unburied falls into the last two of these headings. They're an underground metal band, a designation that still seems rather vague to me. My guess is that what most people mean by underground is a type of band and music that actively prevents their work from reaching large, mainstream, audiences. Like their punk rock forebears, bands like Unburied wish for very little attention, only for the opportunity to play music for a small band of fans, people with a like-minded vision for music. There's an obvious paradox at work here; music like this needs fans in order to survive. Part of the music scene, whether mainstream or underground, feeds on consumer participation. For my money, Unburied mostly builds on nostalgia for the underground of the 1990s rather than contributing to its current development. For better or worse, then, Murder 101 is another look at the gory obsessions of another era, music made up entirely of themes drawn from bloody murder, torturous pain, sexual violence, and so on. The song titles are obvious exercises in failed subtlety. The cover, as most viewers will immediately recognize, is a grotesque drawing of a young woman getting her throat cut by an unseen assailant. I think I understand the underground elements at play here, the in-your-face art, the denial of beauty, the attack on taste. Still, I cringed at the image, repulsed by its violence. Women are too often the victims of violence, whether in real life or on album covers. I know these guys aren't secretly promoting such acts, but I still don't have to like their cover art.

So what's the music on this album like? Plodding, for the most part, but interesting in places. I was especially surprised when I noticed the last track and the first track are basically the same. I wondered why that would be the case, only to think that, perhaps, the band is pointing to the repetitive, cyclical, nature of violence in America. Some of the other tracks also have potentially interesting moments, especially in the spoken commentary that runs through some of the songs. Most of these moments seem like samples taken from movies or television shows. They tend to address questions related to psychopathy, or the problem of certain kinds of human evil. At times, I wondered whether the songs were trying to think through the problem of violence in America by conveying a sense of the depravity, the very senselessness of it all, through the music. It's possible, but I rather doubt it. Still, there must be something going on here besides growling quasi-reflections on violence, otherwise this is just a grotesque and disgusting waste of time.

Track Listing:
1. Trapped in a Delusion
2. I'm going to Fuckin' Kill You
3. Stalked, Fucked, and Buried
4. Abraxas Annihilation
5. Homicidal Sex Rage
6. Reborn Unto Hades
7. Impulse to Kill
8. Heartless Corpse Defilement
9. Witchburner
10. The Kidnapper
11. Murder 101

Added: January 19th 2013
Reviewer: Carl Sederholm
Score:
Related Link: Band Facebook Page
Hits: 1837
Language: english

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