Coming across a new project from Cryptopsy’s Flo Mounier and Into Eternity’s Justin Bender, Digital Doomzday tries it’s hand and re-inventing rap metal…

[tracklist]
1. Underworld Famous
2. Dark Waters
3. It’s the Rot that Counts
4. Burt Reynolds
5. Rule the World feat. Apathy
6. Blunt Force Drama
7. Laying in Leaves
8. Satanic Panic
9. Jihad Me at Hello
10. Angel of Death Watches Channel Zero
[/tracklist]

[details]
[record_label]Independent[/record_label]
[release_date]21st November 2015[/release_date]
[/details]

When a band public declares that they are going to reinvent a genre, one usually knows that is a bit of stretch. Digital Doomzday have taken on the burden of giving rap metal a new sound with by giving it a twist of mashing the genre with ‘Northern Hyperblast’. We’ve already identified two problems in this one sentence alone. One, the band is called Digital Doomzday…that’s right, with a ‘Z’. Second what is ‘northern hyperblast’? A term loosely coined by Dino Cazares to describe Kataklysm, and honestly that’s not really a thing. And this band sounds absolutely nothing like Kataklysm. The silly album art doesn’t really help anyone take this band seriously either, but I’m not sure we’re meant to. Well let’s look at ‘Breed Em’ And Weep‘ then…

Since we’ve already got it in the back of our minds that this album may be a bit silly, we’ve already have the preliminary approach to pick it apart without even listening to a note yet, but when ‘Underworld Famous‘ starts up we’ve already got quite a few things we can confirm. One that this isn’t really rap, nor is it really metal. The sound that is being played here is distinctly average post-hardcore at best. The production quality of the album however shows that Digital Doomzday are serious about this music, so we progress on to the next track.

We do start to see a few elements of death metal with blast beasts being an intermittent occurrence in tracks like ‘Dark Waters‘ and ‘It’s the Rot that Counts‘, but back to ‘Burt Reynolds‘, it’s that hardcore sound that is dominant throughout the album, emphasising that the members are taking on this reinvention project having no previous interest in rap metal. Let’s not even get started into the lyrics either, or the consistency of songwriting as genres fluctuate between Nu-Metal in ‘Laying in Leaves‘ to Deathcore in ‘Jihad Me At Hello‘.

I honestly have no idea whether this is a serious project or not, if so, this is not the reinvention that has been described. If not, I don’t get the joke. ‘Breed Em’ and Weep’ makes no sense in the musical sense or theme. Digital Doomzday may have their market somewhere, but it’s not for me, and not for a lot of metalheads.

[verdict]No[/verdict]
[why]An attempt at a genre busting project by musicians who have no previous experience of the oddly mashed genres, that actually turn out to be an average version of a genre that already exists. Too non-sensical to merit a listen/[/why]