Ugh.

Arguably one Century Media’s worst releases in a flurry of questionable recent releases, California six piece, Arsonists Get All The Girls ply a form of keyboard laden, spazzy, squeally, grindy, growly, blasting pseudo grind/deathcore that is simply directed at Hot Topic kids and kids in general.

With the underlying ‘metal’ being along the lines of The Red Chord, older The Number Twelve Looks Like You and any number of modern short haired grind kids, but no where near as good as any of them, AGATG’s ‘selling point’ if you will, is that they utilize quirky, almost 80’s pop programming and synths within their chaotic deathcore visage. Yay. So what that amounts to is a random points within any number of crumbling, blasting or breakdown filled riffage, the song stops suddenly and tangents into some form of oh-so quirky keyboard/synth pop tangent (“Save the Castle, Screw the Princess”, “Mantipede”) or the forgetful music is backed by some form of the same (“Shoeshine for Neptune”), but is annoying in both counts (“Touristanias”).

Either way, neither add anything to the music and never meshes melds or adds to the music like say The Devil Wears Prada, Drop Dead Gorgeous (both valid comparisons minus the clean elements) or Horse the Band. It actually all comes across as horribly gimmicky rather than an honest attempt to add something to the genre. And of course there’s those oh so quirky song titles (“To Claim Middle Age a Decade Early”). Double ugh.

Much like black metal, I sort of base my opinion on the fact of how good would the music be without the programming? In this case a pretty subpar form of modern spazzy grind/deathcore that’s empty, shallow and the programming really doesn’t add much; It’s cliché filled (lumber filled “Cuffed to Your Ankles”, jazzy break of “13 Year Old Ruby”, piano closure of “So You Think Know About the Games of Life (Party In the Rear)”) and forced (“To Get Eaten By The Rats”).

Steeeeeeee-rike!

[Visit the band's website]

---

Comments