Otep: Hydra

Hydra has been announced as the final album from nu-metallers Otep, the Californian outfit having been around for the past decade or so and seen their most notable success with 2009's Billboard Top 50 entry Smash The Control Machine. Vocalist Otep Shamaya has described Hydra as being "a concept album based on a graphic novel I've been writing for two years about a girl corrupted by the world, corrugated by evil, ripped away from the golden, molten elixir of creativity, and abandoned on the placid, jagged rocks of a cruel and barbaric island where the rats poison themselves". Sounds like pretty lightweight stuff then.

Otep's sound has always been deeply rooted in the techno-industrial nu-metal scene of the 1990's and Hydra proves no exception. Dark and twisted lyrics conjure up anguished images of torture, sadism, horror and plunging into the depths of hell against a backdrop of droning riffs and endless loops. The vocals range from dramatically whispered spoken word self-loathing to brutal screams of despair but all too often comes across as monotonous, repetitive and bad teenage poetry. If Otep have never been your band of choice then Hydra is unlikely to change your mind, this is nu-metal by numbers and the formula has just become dated and cringeworthy.

Track List:-
1. Rising
2. Blowtorch Nightlight
3. Seduce & Destroy
4. Crush
5. Hematopia
6. Necromantic
7. Quarantine
8. Voyeur
9. Apex Predator
10. Feral Game
11. Livestock
12. Hag
13. Theophagy

Added: January 30th 2013
Reviewer: Dean Pedley
Score:
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Language: english

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