G&P Review: Guilty as Sin

Guilty as Sin
Future History
Self Released
Guilty of Sin prove the old adage (old in that I just made it up and I'm old) that drinking deep of Voivodian weirdness is never a bad career move. Eleventy albums in, this space cadet Massachusetts trio is still metal thrashing mad and better than ever; they've finally got a handle on the extraneous world music elements that felt so disjointed in some past efforts. Now the freaky horn jazz that rears like the faux-Gundam on the album corner feels integrated into the music rather than "hey, we took a world music class last semester and are totally broadminded now."
But like a lot of Guilty as Sin albums, Future History suffers from a bit of a split personality. When they're on an instrumental run, Guilty as Sin are invigorating and compelling. The way the skipping, playful Pink Floyd riff that opens "Midnight Hammer" slams into its later Mastodon crush catches me every time, even when I know it's coming. But Future History's crowning jewel is "Magical Papyri of the Tetragrammaton," which rides a twisty, arabesque Nile-ish lead guitar like it's a magic carpet. Even the super-80s keyboard cheese at the end just works for reasons I'm not sure I understand several listens later.
So that's the good, and when Guilty as Sin are on their game, there's a lot to love. But my standard complaint with the band still stands: the vocals blow. Musically, Guilty as Sin shoot for the stars (sometimes literally given their scifi proclivities), but the charisma-less hardcore grunt drags the whole affair down into something far more quotidian. If Guilty as Sin insist on having a frontman, they need to find somebody who has something to say and knows how to convey it because endlessly grunting out "oblivion" on opener "One-Way Ticket to Oblivion" is a tough hurdle for newcomers to get over.

[Full disclosure: Guilty as Sin sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: Guilty as Sin

Guilty as Sin
Psychotronic
Self Released
Guilty as Sin commit subtraction by addition on latest effort Psychotronic. Their reliance on really bad hardcore barking for the first half of the album distracts from the Massachusetts trio's otherwise thrashing blend of DRI and Voivod. Guilty as Sin lives or dies on the strength of their twisty instrumental mystique and the vocals do nothing to contribute to the music's effect. Luckily, by the stronger second half they shut up and just let you enjoy the expansive weirdness. The rhythmic tension and release of "Addicted to Cyanide," with its dark night of the soul introspective interlude and its spiraling toward enlightenment conclusion, shows just how effective Guilty as Sin can be at conjuring emotion without the crutch of vocals.
Otherwise, Psychotronic is like a curated museum of the last 30 years of punk and metal evolution, revolution and convolution. "Frothing at the Cunt," as its deliberately stupid name may suggest, could have been slapped into the set of just about any of the bands on the infamous Rock Against Reagan tour while the horn section of "Into Dust" would go unremarked on a Total Fucking Destruction record.
Vocals aside, there are a couple of other clunkers that distract from Psychotronic's better moments. The Middle Eastern shuffle of "Godekli Tepe" is too much of a rehash of the similarly-inflected "Before the Flood" from prior album III and the 12 minute title track, which shuts down the album, is meandering to the point of being inert.
So once again, as with III and Led to the Slaughter, Guilty as Sin show flashes of inspired thrashy genius but fail to deliver a concise, complete album. However, editing the best parts of all three records into a single album would make a tidy little experimental thrash extravaganza.

[Full disclosure: The band sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: Guilty as Sin

Guilty as Sin
III
Self Released

“Do you think,” he said aloud as he painstakingly drove, “that when we die and appear before God on Judgment Day, that our sins will be listed in chronological order or in order of severity, which could be ascending or descending, or alphabetically? Because I don’t want to have God boom out at me when I die at the age of eighty-six, ‘So you’re the little boy who stole the three Coke bottles off the Coca-Cola truck when it was parked in the 7-11 lot back in 1962, and you’ve got a lot of fast talking to do.’” “I think they’re cross-referenced,” Luckman said. “And they just hand you a computer printout that’s the total of a long column that’s been added up already.”
Phillip K. Dick
A Scanner Darkly
1977

The first few listens, Guilty as Sin’s latest album was a tad disappointing. The ’80s grade thrash production seemed to flatten out the largely instrumental trio’s more ambitious and meandering compositions, but the more I spun it, the more it began to fit like a well worn denim jacket covered in patches for MegaForce bands.
III splits its time between old school thrash ragers and more ambitious material that evokes Pelican (with better drumming) in one instance and Voivod the next. The old style production works best on a speed picked romped like “Truth Serum,” but I would prefer a sharper, brighter sound on something like the cosmic loops and whorls of “Planets.” But bands that fund their own albums often have financial choices to make.
I crave that clarity because the trio has really stepped up the songwriting, despite the occasional false step, like adding vocals and lyrics to Led to the Slaughter standout “House Arrest.” Lyrical sampling: “House arrest/House arrest/Got me on motherfucking house arrest,” which sounds like it could be a parody of a really bad ’80s hardcore band. But all of that can be forgiven for the Voivodian grandeur of “Galactic Agent: Pacal Vocan”

Guilty as Sin – “Galactic Agent: Pacal Vocan”

The world music elements that felt grating and misplaced in the last album have also found a comfortable home. Breaking up the noise, the Middle Eastern bump ‘n’ grind of “Before the Flood” sounds like the kind of tune Karl Sanders puts on when the strippers stop by for a private show.
The bulk of the material is strong enough to overcompensate for the occasional lyrical false step and production that may not show off their music to its fullest potential. But bottom line, songwriting wins out every time.

[Full disclosure: the band sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: Guilty as Sin

Guilty as Sin
Led to the Slaughter
Self Released
Massachusetts trio Guilty as Sin bill themselves as “biker/Viking metal,” which appears to be a euphemism for instrumental thrash/proto-death metal with the occasional splash of prog and world music. So yeah, I guess “biker/Viking metal” is a lot shorter.
Though samples periodically stand in for the missing vocals, Guilty as Sin keep the focus squarely on the musical side of the operations and when that focus remains more on the thrash/proto-death aspect, things are adequately gruff and grumbly. “Carnivorous Intent” ably stampedes the gap between the overlapping styles. “Eagle Over Mountain” and “Reptile Agenda” crib from Metal Blade-era Slayer (“Reptile," in particular, nicks notions from “The Final Command”).
Where Guilty as Sin most ably manage to tame and master their influences is on “House Arrest,” a stamping rhino charge drums collide bodily with an opening blower bass and pick slide crescendo that detonates ringing glissades and brute force chug-a-lug. It’s a potent reminder that brute force is always as excellent choice when crafting a song.

Guilty as Sin – “House Arrest”

Where everything goes horribly off the rails, unfortunately, is the Curse of the Final Song. Of that Guilty as Sin are guilty as charged. A full 25 percent of this 32 minute album is consumed by “International Selection,” an interminably meandering faux Middle Eastern bit of annoyance that plunges straight into every bad stereotype you associate with an instrumental metal band, which Guilty as Sin had heretofore deftly hurdled. Everything just gets bogged down under the weight of the chimes, gongs, and electro-music trappings that are really there just to remind you these guys once enrolled in that world music appreciation course. Tell me, what kind of bikers and/or Vikings do you know who get down with a flute?

[Full disclosure: Guilty as Sin kindly provided me with a copy.]