Coming from Newcastle, UK (the home of my favorite beer I might add) is this painfully boring, tough guy attitude oriented and blatantly unoriginal metallic hardcore quartet by the name of Boltdown, and their debut LP Omnicide.

What makes them so “painfully boring” you might ask? Well for starters, they seem to model themselves after the two most unsuccessfully mimicked and ripped-off bands in the history of metal, Pantera and At the Gates (occasionally), and it comes out rather third rate. As for the hardcore influence, any band of your choice would do, as I don’t really listen to any of it and do not have the knowledge to namedrop anyone from the genre – not my cup of tea (or mug o’ brew if you prefer).

To make matters worse, they make no attempt to stay away from the redundant breakdowns that have been all the rage within the metalcore realm over the past few years, which makes them that much more annoying.

I’m not going to waste your or my time by diving into songs individually, so to sum it up shortly, you could take just about any track on display here, and find riffs from the Pantera catalog from ’92 onward, butchered and simplified, an aimless and seemingly just there for the heavy factor breakdown, little bits of At the Gates inspired melody or solo work, and the ever present tough guy, modeled after Phil Anselmo or any number of similar vocalists styled vocals – there you have it. Though if I was to pick one somewhat bright spot on the album, it would be the closer “The Last Chapter”, as it features some pretty cool riffing that wanders into almost death/thrash territory, even if it is to be ruined by more of the same thereafter.

Their one attempt at some real diversity comes from the mid album instrumental “Solitude”, just like so many other albums out there that put this sort of track mid album to try and break up the monotony – they take out all the aggression and load up on melody – I’m sorry, but this isn’t enough to make me forget that I just listened to the same song with slight variations five times over, and the feeling that I’m gonna hear four or five more just like it – ugh.

To be completely fair, four or five years ago, I probably would’ve ate this shit up, but I just didn’t know any better, and my musical tastes were still pretty narrow in scope. I’d venture to say that anyone susceptible to tough guy core would dig it, but there’s so much better stuff in the same vein out there. I love Pantera, have since I first discovered metal at the tender age of 12 or 13 and always will, but I can’t stand to see them copied and ripped off by third rate pretenders – back to the drawing board boys.

[Visit the band's website]

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