The Smackdown makes me scratch my head. Not in the confusing manner of avant garde bands whose genre lines are washed out and virtually absent from their music. Not in the sense that a band is so blazingly technical that it creates a bizarre wall of sound that always presents something new every time you hear it like Gorguts, Psyopus, and others. Not in the sense that the riffs are obtuse and obscure like Blut Aus Nord or the more recent Mayhem. No, in fact The Smackdown is the one of the most straight-forward acts you can think of. So why does it make me scratch my head? Because this is a metal site and The Smackdown is as close to metal as my penis is close to fucking a porn star that has been on Bang Bros. It’s not impossible for me to fuck a porn star who has been on Bang Bros- I do have the prerequisite penis and I live in the Miami area which Bang Bros is situated in- but it is sure as fuck unlikely to happen.

The Smackdown play… well, hardcore. Now, this doesn’t necessarily write it off from metallic sensibilities; after all metal and hardcore have bled into each other for years. But this isn’t crossover thrash, grindcore, or the much maligned areas of metallic hardcore and metalcore. This is very much the breed of screaming hardcore popular in Hot Topic and various hip regions throughout the Western World. It’s not really something we come across much here at Teufel’s Tomb. So throughout much of my listening experience I’ve had my eyebrow set to a permanent arch, trying to contemplate just how we got sent a copy.

So, does Someone Has to Kill the Headwriter suck or deliver? Well, it’s got the hooks, is competently played, and has diverse writing. It should easily appeal to fans of this style of music. But as I said before, it’s not really a genre intended for us metal folk out there. Apart from some very Swarrrm-inspired moments on "Nothing to No-show for; Rewrite Is a Dud", "Too Fast for Love", and parts of the second half of the album, there isn’t really anything here to cause the metal head to jump up and grab. It may loosely appeal to those Swarrrm fans out there (keyword: "loosely"), but only those fans who come to Swarrrm for its hardcore influences, not for the more chaotic grind and insane vocal elements that give Swarrrm its extreme metal blood.

It’s odd that we were sent The Smackdown, but it’s not like it’s a total bust. If you get your rocks of to this stuff, by all means go forth and conquer. I, on the other hand, will be over here listening to something entirely different trying to find a way to trick those Bang Bros chicks into coming to my place. Written By: Necro-tron