Review Summary: A path well-trodden makes the walk more pleasant.
In some ways, Misery Index got hit harder by semi-recent global events than most of their peers. A live band in the truest sense of the term, they have never been known for their technical prowess or experimental songwriting, but rather for their stellar on-stage delivery. It is easy to see how harrowing these past two years must have been for the Baltimore-based quartet. On the bright side, all that building anger and frustration can yield quite productive results, as Complete Control, the band's latest offering, impressively demonstrates. More than twenty years into their career, Misery Index return with a vengeance and make it a point to show the world that they still have what it takes to write crushing, ferocious deathgrind.
The opener's foreboding intro gives way to a melange of blastbeats, double bass and MI's signature open chord riffs. Not since the days of their first full release, Retaliate, had I heard them be as aggressive and on point right out of the gate. And while not exactly representative of the album's overall tone, it still serves to showcase the band's reinvigorated fierceness - a quality that I sorely missed on their two previous albums.
As for the rest of the album, there is little point in dissecting every single song. If you are familiar with MI's discography, you pretty much get what you expected going in. They are not trying to reinvent themselves here, but rather sprinkle in tiny bits of genre-overlapping ideas like black metal-esque chord progressions (Reciprocal Repulsion) or hardcore-y breakdowns (Conspiracy of None). In general, the structures seem more formulaic than what was offered on Rituals of Power or The Killing Gods, but that is hardly a bad thing. If anything, the songs feel focussed, each built on a central idea. Sure, the riffs might be reminiscent of songs from their other albums at times, but I would attribute that to the band having a clear vision rather than to a lack of ambition.
Lyrically, I was expecting the themes to be a bit more clear-cut, so the vague and mostly generalized tales of deceit and "authority bad" came as a disappointment. A band as political as Misery Index surely could have made more of an effort to comment on recent political and social developments. The lyrics are fine, but just like the songwriting, they are exactly what you would expect from them.
One could argue that the band is playing it safe with this album. I would counter that Complete Control contains some of the best live material they have written in years. It seems like they have taken a close look at their setlists and previous albums and decided to write more of what turned out to work best in the past, which I simply cannot blame them for. They are a live band, after all.
