Demo-lition Derby: Extreme Mental Abuse

I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.

Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
1910

Extreme Mental Abuse
Extreme Mental Abuse
There’s an unfortunate hollowness to both the conception and execution of Extreme Mental Abuse, a side project of Mark Magill of the band SSS. The 20 songs, banged out in 18 minutes, feel rote, as though this were an exercise in genre rather than an honest expression of some innate emotion. Combining Unseen Terror’s infamous bumblebee guitar tone with Excruciating Terror-style attack, Extreme Mental Abuse rail against “Corrupt Government,” “First World Tyranny” and “One World Government,” falling back on conceits that have grown contemptible with familiarity, passed through the hands of several generations of likeminded musicians.
I could forgive well worn lyrics if the music gave me that necessary adrenal jolt, but Extreme Mental Abuse just lack any sense of urgency. While the occasional tune like “Global Stratospheric Obliteration” slams crust into grind like a punk-based Large Hadron Collider, releasing sparks of energy, the rest of the album largely feels monotonous and one-dimensional, lashed to a rickety sounding drum (machine?).
There’s a lot of grind getting banged out all across the globe these days, so it’s going to take a lot to stand out from the slavering hordes of blastbeaten barbarians. This just isn’t lighting up my mojo. You can check it out for yourself at Extreme Mental Abuse’s Bandcamp page.