Review Summary: xHORRENDOUSx
Am I funny? Well, I suppose not. In fact, “you’re not funny” seems to be a pretty popular phrase with my family and friends. “You’re not funny”, they’ll say to me. “Oh yeah?” I’ll say. And that’s about as far as I get. But even though I myself am not funny, I would like to think that I have some competent grasp on what
is funny. Farting is funny. Sock puppets are funny. Ugly people are funny. Pie fights are funny. A terrible, generic metalcore band claiming to be a joke? Well, I can firmly say that is not funny, but that’s what Eatmewhileimhot! attempt to be on their “full-length” debut
xALBUMx. Clocking in at a whopping fourteen minutes, does
xALBUMx succeed as being a joke album?
Now, I understand that there are a lot of bands out there who have done stuff in the same vein as this. Iwrestledabearonce, although not necessarily a joke band, does use humour and a fair amount of cheekiness in their wacky metal music. I Set My Friends On Fire pokes fun of generic metalcore by utilizing the genre’s stereotypes, all the while putting forth a decent, tongue-in-cheek effort. But Eatmewhileimhot! doesn’t seem to hit either of those marks: they don’t really do anything that’s funny, and they certainly don’t do anything that’s interesting. What we get on
xALBUMx is the same angry growling and predictable breakdowns that we’ve being hearing since 2003. Is that supposed to be the joke?
In terms of actual quality,
xALBUMx just rehashes breakdown after breakdown after breakdown after breakdown after breakdown after breakdown: “xGRIZZLYx” is just a parade of breakdowns backed by gang vocals, “xPIZZAx” is just a parade of breakdowns backed by tortured vocals, “xSWHOREx” is just a parade of breakdowns back by
both tortured vocals and gang vocals (I guess they needed to switch it up). “xBICYCLEx” sounds like something found in an SNES game, acting as an interlude with a funky bassline, while “xVAMPIRESx” serves as the album’s longest, and possibly most annoying, song. And, quite frankly, by the time you hit “xMUSTACHEx” you’d think the album had accidentally restarted itself, and by the time you hit the album’s closer “xBURRITOx”, you’ll wish you never even bothered to listen to this in the first place. It’s just really
that pointless.
But in terms of what makes this funny, I will never know. Is it funny because it’s so horribly generic? Is it funny because they call it an “album” despite its fourteen minute length? Is it funny because they make fun of straight-edge? Is it funny because they have a dumb name? Is it funny because they’re making stupid music and not being funny just to piss people off? Or is the joke on me, simply because I took the time to analyze the musical equivalent of a dog turd? Quite frankly, I couldn’t really care less: eleven-year-olds with myspace accounts will obviously get their breakdown fix here, but everyone else will have their eyes roll out of their head. And even though I may loathe other generic metalcore bands like Attack Attack! and The Devil Wears Prada, I can firmly say that they do it twenty times better, making Eatmewhileimhot! is a true and total waste of musical space.
