Right. I’ve almost had it with this whole kids playing deathcore/grind spazz tech bullshit. While I generally embrace the heavier, more death metal aspect of this genre (Despised Icon, Ion Dissonance, Whitechapel, Diskreet, Knights of the Abyss, At The Throne of Judgment, Woe of Tyrants, etc) this overly spazzy, emo plagued, screechy, quirky, pseudo grind has got to stop as I’ve literally been swamped with it recently ; Arsonists Get all the Girls, The Orangeburg Massacre, Heavy Heavy Low Low, The Assailant, Robinson, War From a Harlots Mouth, The Number 12 Looks Like You, A Second From the Surface, The Taste of Silver, Dance Club Massacre and Last Chance to Reason. The list goes on a on in a sea of short hair, tight pants, screams, chaotic squawking, growls and horrid song titles-and they all sound the fucking same.

And to add to the issue of complete unoriginality-some of the afore mentioned bands have tried ever so hard to add some gimmick to their contrived sound; Arsonists Get all the Girls=quirky synths, War From a Harlots Mouth=jazzy interludes, Dance Club Massacre=horror film atmospherics and synths and in the case of Oklahoma City’s Destroyer Destroyer=detuned 7 string guitars. Yay-so that means a slightly lower end on the rumbling breaks between grating squeals and equal grating screams from the annoying frontman.

Listen, just because you have heard albums from Converge, Pig Destroyer, Daughters, wear a Napalm Death or Dying Fetus shirt and have some second rate Paul Romano meets Jacob Bannon artwork, doesn’t give you the right or ability to lay down 12 short stabs of mindless noise; not including the required slower, post rock Isis-tracks (“Number Cruncher”) or lengthier more experimental “Error” and “Off the Beaten Path”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like my sonic cacophony as much as anyone as efforts from the likes of Gaza, Nights Like These, Architect and others get regular play from me, but shit, some semblance of structure or actual chords might be good. As it stands, Littered With Arrows stands as a musical testimony to the old theory that if you put a bunch of chimpanzees and typewriters in a room, eventually out of the random chaos, something readable may result. Replace the monkeys with teenage kids and the typewriters with instruments and you get Destroyer Destroyer in the very early stages of the experiment.

I’m sure a bunch of ‘extreme’ myspacers will ‘get’ this and say I don’t ‘get’ it because I’m a musical relic by today’s standards, but I’ve heard a lot of music-both old and new and Destroyer Destroyer is among the most grating I’ve heard. But I guessing that’s mission accomplished for them and the sad excuse for a scene we are currently experiencing.

[Visit the band's website]

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