I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Technicality doesn’t mean shit in the greater picture. If you’re not bringing to the table other elements, no matter of technicality is going to make your shit good. Yeah, it can enhance your music: many bands are able to take technicality and unleash some of the most devastatingly punishing music known to man. But it can’t make outright good music: most technical bands can play like there is no tomorrow, but the technicality only hides how banal and insipidly uninspired their music truly is. (Ex. Dragonforce. Yep, we get it. You can play insanely complex shit really fast. Now, can you actually write a song? Nope.)

I remind our dear readers of this fact because the death metal band with the coolest name in the world, Prostitute Disfigurement, has jumped further aboard the technical death metal boat. And by “jumped further aboard the technical death metal boat” I really mean “was killed by a ninjitsu-wielding mathematician who donned its skin, jumped off the original brutal boat while simultaneously blowing it up, swam across to the other boat, stowawayed on board, and then dropped the band’s skin and went walking around with a Prostitute Disfigurement namd tag.”

Descendants Of Depravity has about FUCK ALL to do with any of Prostitute Disfigurement’s past releases. Yes, the band has had a technical edge to them in the past, but not like this. I’m not talking a jump in writing like Decrepit Birth had (where 80% of the style changed but there was still some common links to its previous sound); this sounds like an entirely different band. Gone is the somewhat technical playing of old; this is much, much tighter and more complex. Gone is the brutal vocal style; yup, the band opted for incredibly coherent, mid-range growls and screams on this sucker. I don’t really think you can even call this Prostitute Disfigurement anymore.

And that’s sort of the problem. Descendants Of Depravity starts out catchy and decent enough. There’s some good solos in here, and some decent song structure. Fuck, "Killing for Company" even has an "Open Casket" vibe to it. But holy fuck, this thing gets old FAST. The problem with the writing is there is absolutely no staying power. Prostitute Disfigurement made too much of an attempt to sound like their fellow Neurotic labelmates rather than craft a technical sound all their own, and the problem is it’s heavy with a “been there, annihilated that” vibe. What good material is on here grows old quick, and the good material on here is redundant as is. If you put the album off to the side for months, it will be fresh again… but only for about 2 or 3 listens.

And that’s the rub: their previous sound may have been generic, but it was massively catchier, more appealing, and more entertaining than their newer technical style. The solos and segues really are pretty damn good, but I don’t want to bore myself with other parts of the album to get to them.

Returning to what I said above: technicality doesn’t mean shit in the end. Now, Prostitute Disfigurement isn’t the worse case scenario; there are in fact good songs on Descendants Of Depravity, the problem is they don’t have lasting appeal. Prostitute Disfigurement needs to figure out the happy median between this new style and their previous style so it can merge technicality and good song writing.

Written By: Necro-tron