I have been hearing a lot of hype about Trigger The Bloodshed. I don't quite grasp it. Yes, they are fast. Yes, they are heavy. Yet, so are a lot of other bands. Pig Destroyer, Coldworker, Rotten Sound, Psyopus, et al. TTB fall into the ranks of the grind bands. Perhaps it is this fact alone. Other than Nasum, how many grind bands have really made it that far from the underground? OK, besides Napalm Death?

Perhaps I am listening to too much jazz these days and the old metal ears are not what they used to be but I am not getting it. Yes, TTB are extreme. Yes, they are metal. Yet, I have difficulty understanding what makes them stand above all others. Could it be the sheer brutality of their delivery? Perhaps. Perhaps this is my problem. I have grown too accustomed to some degree of melody and less fascinated with sheer volume of sound.

I'll stop whining in a sec but I want to make one last point. The drumming. It does not vary much from the click drumming attack. There is little to prevent one from going into a trance-like state. The vocals, while death metal growled, sound like barks. I don't fully get the sense of much creativity from the death metal smash that Trigger The Bloodshed offer. Even in the rarer moment (see “The Defiled”) sounds like an attempt to lift from Nile a discarded composition.

It saddens me to say that I was disappointed by a death metal release that has so much potential. Or maybe I just don't understand TTB's art.