Many, many year before they turned into rock stars, I saw Korn in concert to support their debut album. The opening act was this wretched electro-nu-metal, programmed pile of puke called Cradle of Thorns. Upon listening to the god awful Anticore I briefly thought I was listening to the same band.

This album only further cements how hot and cold Crash Music can be. From this years’ early solid death metal of Enforsaken, Vicious Circle, Jungle Rot and Abyssmal Dawn to Society 1, Twin Method , 40 Below Summer and this, Crash Music is rapidly becoming a Nu metal haven. Acumen Nation is horrible. Truly, and vehemently horrible, and I defy any metal reviewer with any sort of integrity that is not 15 years old or a friend of the band/label to justify that this band has a record deal, let alone their 10 year, 9 album existence. It’s, not because of the “N” word either (“Nu” you dumbshits), as Twin Method’s debut was an acceptable affair, it’s simply the fact that Acumen Nation’s grating, techno beat filled noise, is dated, boring and bereft of anything remotely memorable.

I’m sort of reminded of Junkie XL and other metal bands that flirted with metal+programmed beats; Rammstein, KMFDM, Skrew, Marilyn Manson and even Fear Factory’s Remanufacture, but the ‘robotic 13 year old screaming’ vocals, random samples, third rate riffage and hollow beats make this album insufferably tolerable to anyone who has any sort of musical affinity whatsoever, unless you are a 10 year die hard fan. The thing is I keep seeing other band references thrown out like ‘hardcore tech metal’, The Dillinger Escape Plan and even Lamb of God and Poison the Well. All no more than a desperate attempts by the band and their label to market a terrible, dated sound to today’s metal fans. Do not buy it.

If you must have techno/aggro programmed industrial metal, listen to the bands in the previous paragraph, not this contrived and tired attempt to supposedly meld hardcore and techno-metal.

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