The debut effort from Auckland hardcore band Los Muertos is heavy, loud and boring. Whilst this band makes good use of tight heavy riffs and two vocalists to mix up differently paced metal and punk riffs but this ends up giving a cut-and-paste sound.

Stand out tracks include Abyss and An Asshole and a Gentleman due to their ability to be recognised above the grind of the rest of the album which manifests itself in the band’s experimental song structure. Los Muertos have taken special care to not fall into the standard chorus,verse,chorus,verse structure but have somehow ended up with a CD full of radio-friendly three minute tracks. The exception to this being track 8 which is a minute-long intro noise for track 9.

I don’t think this band is trying to be pretentious but it is hard to say whether this album is meant to be badass or arty, but either way this attempt to be different has left the music sounding too much like everything else.

Andrew Neal