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I’m not sure what to make of this demo. On the one hand it really isn’t my thing, and on the other it’s not bad at all. Just the same, I don’t think it bodes well for the future. I’ll try and explain what I mean.

For starters, Project: Failing Flesh is the new home of former Voivod bass player/vocalist Eric Forrest. Now I don’t have any of the albums he did with Voivod, so I can’t say if this is a step up or down. This band is like what you would get if you (for some insane reason) decided to cross Pantera with Soilwork. Now PFF are nowhere near as lousy as Soilwork, but they aren’t as good as Pantera either. For the most part this CD consists of very modern-metal type downtuned heavy grooves. These parts are pretty cool, and even though it’s very simplistic I enjoy this CD most when they are just chunking along. They also mix in some death-metal style blastbeats and thrashier passages, and these I don’t care for as much, as they seem kind of thrown in. The real sticking point for me on this is the vocals. I don’t know how Forrest sounded with Voivod, but here he is just screaming for the most part. He does mix in some clean vox, and those are better, if not really compelling. He is obviously a big fan of Thomas Lindberg, who was really the only screamer of this school that I can stand. So the vocals are a total loss for me, and they more or less ruin the CD. The last track is a cover of Venom’s "Warhead", and is as pointless as Venom were to begin with.

The reason I see this as being indicative of a bad trend is here we have a band taking the simplistic groove approach of nu-metal and adding the worst elements of the Gothenburg school of clone-death. The results here are OK, but can you imagine if other bands decided this was a good idea? The LAST thing we need is another genre of mallcrap. I can just see some band in the future mixing blastbeats and screaming with rapping. Ugh.

Anyway, the CD case is very pro, with a very modernist look. Not my bag, but well done. I do like the chaos star on the actual CD. Rather than print the lyrics inside (they were sent to me on a separate sheet.) the booklet contains a long, rather incoherent rant about organ stealing. Don’t ask me, I have no idea what the fuck that is about.

This is not a bad CD, and besides the screaming, I rather like parts of it. But it’s really not the kind of metal I care for, and makes me fervently wish the US could produce more bands that know what good old metal is really about.