Oh for Christ’s sake, what is this shit? Ladies and gentlemen, I present the new The Black Dahlia Murder album. On The Black Dahlia Murder’s last effort, Unhallowed, the band ripped off lesser At the Gates riffs a good deal of the time and combined some Americanization to give it the distinct sound of actually not sounding distinct and merely like some crappy American band milking the Gothenburg scene for all that it could. It was a boring excuse of overrated melodic death metal that could barely match its inspiration, much less give the metal listener any reason to buy The Black Dahlia Murder’s album when they already owned countless Swedish melodic death albums.

So here is Miasma, the next "opus" from The Black Dahlia Murder. From the opener of "Built for Sin", things are somewhat looking up: there’s a distinct Morbid Angel-esque Florida death metal influence in that intro that gets the listener excited. Could it be that The Black Dahlia Murder took criticism to heart and went off to further develop their own identity (albeit through more worship)? Nope, as soon as "I’m Charming" kicks in it’s back to the unoriginal, crappy At the Gates mimicry. And boy, am I using that term quite literally.

Miasma is practically plagiarism. While Unhallowed sounded simply like quite a bit of material was ripped off those infamous Swedes, Miasma sounds almost like the entire album is nothing but crappy At the Gates riffs from beginning to end. Seriously, I’ve listened to this thing repeatedly now, and every time it sounds like At the Gates if At the Gates had 26 extra chromosomes and were thus a new super breed of mongoloids. Mongoloids with no bowel control to boot. It’s still boring yet has become even more generic than Unhallowed.

There are several types of bands out there: those that have their own unique sound (though not necessarily entirely original), those that are nothing but clones but are damn good at their worship, and those that are clones that fail miserably. Guess which category The Black Dahlia Murder falls under? Yes, this album gets its material from an awesome band, but that doesn’t men shit if you write boring, contrived, generic crap. If you own Slaughter of the Soul- wait no, scratch that- if you even have a single shitty At the Gates mp3 you have no reason to buy Miasma, unless you’re one of those twenty something boys in girl pants that picks up your chicks outside the high school football benches during lunch period. In that case, maybe it would be better to ignore this review, get real men’s pants, actually buy fucking Slaughter of the Soul and Carcass‘ Heartwork (and Arsis as well- the only good American melodic death metal band) instead of their crappy imitations. Maybe now you won’t be as pathetic a shitheel when you go to pick up barely legal ass, pervert.

Written By: Necro-tron