Reviews – Complete Control – BLABBERMOUTH.NET

With risky sociopolitical circumstances consuming the worldwide stage, there is not any higher time for a brand new MISERY INDEX album. Working 20 years robust, the Baltimore-based band returns with “Full Management”, a nine-song juggernaut that is true to the band’s violent demise metallic template and infused with grindcore and hardcore punk influences which might be much more distinguished and overt than they have been in a few years. MISERY INDEX has at all times been an immediately recognizable act that has centered on high quality songcraft, however this time round, the band’s collective songwriting capability has improved immensely. “Full Management”, the unit’s first full-length since 2019’s “Rituals of Energy”, is sort of presumably the perfect album of MISERY INDEX‘s profession with explosive songs which might be attention-grabbing and addictively catchy.

Part of the band’s ongoing fortitude could be chalked as much as its enduring lineup, because the band in its present kind has existed for over a decade. Founding member Jason Netherton (lead vocals, bass) has been banging out the belligerent jams with Adam Jarvis (drums) and Mark Kloeppel (rhythm guitar, vocals) for greater than 15 years, whereas Darrin Morris has performed lead guitar with the quartet since he changed John “Sparky” Voyles in 2010. But there was a way that they had reached a sturdy plateau on their final two releases, however there was nothing that we hadn’t heard earlier than. With “Full Management”, there is a better sense of urgency in addition to a rougher punk edge that contrasts the elevated heavy metallic aspect exhibited by the busy guitar solos on songs like “Now Defied!” and the title observe, the latter of which can also be replete with a heartfelt, anthemic refrain part.

MISERY INDEX has by no means centered upon demise metallic tropes of gore, the occult or Satanism. True to kind, they proceed to belch diatribes constructed upon considerate social commentary, fueled by Netherton who has a Ph.D. in Media Research. (He additionally authored the e-book “Extremity Retained: Notes From The Demise Steel Underground”). “Full Management” touches upon the notion that individuals aren’t topic to regulate within the trendy world through violence; as an alternative, individuals are dominated by a pervasive arm of social management and stress that targets individuals on a person stage. Intuitively sufficient, this cerebral outlook manifests itself in a passionate supply of the thematic content material on songs like “The Eaters and the Eaten” and “Conspiracy of None”, tracks which might be simply as infectiously memorable as they’re significant.

Within the face of the latest and present pandemic, the band traded digital recordsdata remotely and tracked at numerous studios. This was a obligatory evil that many musicians confronted, and a scenario that MISERY INDEX seen as being lower than supreme. Nonetheless, they acknowledge that the completely different method contributed to a extra meticulous and refined songwriting course of. No matter toll they could have taken, listeners will clearly reap the rewards of an unbelievable excessive music album. “Full Management” is arguably the perfect album of MISERY INDEX‘s profession.