Music

Album Review: The Last Felony ‘Too Many Humans’

Published

14 years ago

August 17, 2010

The Last Felony (TLF) are releasing their sophomore effort, ‘Too Many Humans’, today and I’m here to give you a run down of my thoughts on the album! These guys were signed to Lifeforce records earlier this year and if you know anything about Lifeforce, you know what you’re getting into when you pick this album up. But if you don’t and you’re curious to know a bit more, just check after the jump!

Make sure to check out bassist Seb Painchaud’s Top 10 Zombie Movie list HERE!

The album starts off with the track, ‘We Are The Future Housing Developments For Maggots’. With a name like that, I hope you realize what you are getting into. This is balls to the wall, blast-beat death metal that doesn’t hide behind any other genre or classification. TLF knows exactly what they are and they stick to it with an almost violent fervor. This track is a pretty good representation of what the rest of the album has to bring: intense guitars with dissonant harmonies, blazingly fast drum work and guttural vocals. I say that is it a pretty good representation as some of the final tracks of the album have ever so slightly more melody and are just a wee bit slower in tempo. However, the differences in these later tracks are not drastic enough to warrant any ‘’second takes’’.

The production of this album is somewhat tricky: When listening to the album in my car, the drums were overpowering. However, when using high quality headphones, the drums sat very neatly in the mix. In any case, the bass drum was one of my only concerns as it has an incredibly sharp attack that fights with the snare for attention. Otherwise, the drums are well mixed and the cymbals have a satisfying sizzle to them. The panning of the guitars could have been done a bit better as it is hard to distinguish which harmony you are hearing at a given time. The bass is almost nonexistent in this album. I could hear it ever so faintly above the mix at various points, but rarely did it add any noticeable low end. The vocals sometimes, albeit rarely, got buried in the mix. However, they were quick to bounce back out.

Overall, The Last Felony has put out a very solid album that unfortunately doesn’t really add anything to the genre. If you are a fan of tech-death metal, then you will be extremely satisfied you picked this up. Someone searching for something that pushes the boundaries of the genre needn’t stop here.

3.5 out of 5 skulls

JonathanBarkan

Managing editor/music guy/social media fella of Bloody-Disgusting

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Music

“He Walks By Night” – Listen to a Brand New John Carpenter Song NOW!

Published

2 weeks ago

April 9, 2024

John Squires

It’s a new day, and you’ve got new John Carpenter to listen to. John Carpenter, Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter have released the new track He Walks By Night this morning, the second single off their upcoming album Lost Themes IV: Noir, out May 3 on Sacred Bones Records.

Lost Themes IV: Noir is the latest installment in a series that sees Carpenter releasing new music for John Carpenter movies that don’t actually exist. The first Lost Themes was released in 2015, followed by Lost Themes II in 2016 and Lost Themes III: Alive After Death in 2021.

Sacred Bones previews, “It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that would become Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts. Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. With Lost Themes IV: Noir, they’ve struck gold again, this time mining the rich history of the film noir genre for inspiration.

“Since the first Lost Themes, John has referred to these compositions as “soundtracks for the movies in your mind.” On the fourth installment in the series, those movies are noirs. Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes these songs “noirish” is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone.

“The trio’s free-flowing chemistry means Lost Themes IV: Noir runs like a well-oiled machine—the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.”

You can pre-save Lost Themes IV: Noir right now! And listen to the new track below…