I love head-banging. It is a great feeling to release pent-up energy at a Metal show, the crowd is into the experience; each head is like those fucking drinking birds you can get at the novelty store. Unfortunately for me, my head-banging days are pretty much over. I just kind of shake my head like I have a raging case of scabies, such is the nature of turning fifty.

I digress however and move to the matter of why I’m here today and that is to tell you about Dead and Dripping and their family-friendly album Blackened Cerebral Rifts, a nine-track banger, literally. It is… before I go further, I should confess that I have a passing love for Deathcore, at best. My fellow writers love it, Lorna Shore is an altar we here at Teeth of the Divine worship at, I love some Putrid Pile, Whitechapel and Thy Art is Murder and that’s kind of it. But I’m always looking for new ways to damage my hearing so I picked this one to see what I’m missing out on.

Well, it isn’t really fun to listen to I’ll get that out of the way. I like to think that I’ve heard it all, but apparently not because Dead and Dripping are the aural equivalent of being ripped apart by a chimpanzee; I’ve never experienced it for myself, but I saw pictures of the lady that did get attacked by one and GODDAMN! Anyway, you may or may not see where I’m going with this but I’m struggling to be nice and not having much luck with it.

“Tragic Ascent of Absurdity’s Pale Moon” starts off fun enough, a bit of blasting a bit of thrashing and then something happens that I wasn’t expecting… it gets annoying. Fast. I think this might be the first album where I looked to see if the song was over, that happens with the unnecessarily long “Infinitely Plummeting into Violet Portals of Delusion”, when the songs on the album just sort of flounder like fish out of water it doesn’t help things to have a song that long. I’m not saying that Dead and Dripping aren’t good musicians, they have two other full-length albums that you could check out if you wanted to. I don’t have a favorite song on Blackened Cerebral Riffs, well I guess “Hopeless Desire for Reprieve” but only because it’s 2.31 minutes short and it’s an instrumental.

So, I’m sorry, not sorry; I just don’t like this. Like I said before, maybe it’s because I’m getting older; whatever the case it just isn’t my bag of rice. It’s not that Dead and Dripping are horrible musicians, they know how to play their instruments, but this album makes me want to punch babies. For those who like this sort of thing, according to the promo blurb, you’ll eat this up if you like: Wormed, Demilich, Suffocation(?) and Defeated Sanity. Buy it if you like it.

[Visit the band's website]

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