### Godless Rising: Rising hatred

#### 20/01/10 || Daemonomania

This is just one of those bands that have many elements in place to be DEATH METAL, but somehow fail. Checklist time.

- Sharing members with Vital Remains. Say what you want about Vital Remains and their endless five hundred minute blastbeat/solo fests, you cannot deny they are death metal.

- Having lots of tattoos, or spiky armbands to compensate for not having lots of tattoos. And being unattractive in that attractively death metal way.

- Cover art featuring a buffed up Satan carrying a sword. Yaargh.

- Fiery logo containing a pentagram, the number 666, an upside-down cross, and 3 devil tails. Count ‘em, 3.

- Lyrics managing to be blasphemous, nonsensical, and dull at the same time. Anyone with a metal collection large enough to contain some “third tier” groups knows what I’m talking about. There very well may be a computer program that auto-generates this stuff. However, no mechanical device could come up with something as cool as “heartless bastard – crazed up in my fucking mind”. I am so crazed UP right now! Fucken Jeebus and his SHIT! Great metal brains are at work all over the world, it appears.

- Quality growling of Jeff Guslin, enhanced by that magick sepulchral echo effect that gets my dong twitching when done right. Gremlin-highs are weak, but that ain’t much of a problem.

- Large quantity of double bassing done in a workmanlike fashion by one Mike McPherson.

Despite all that, this is not ze metal ov deff. It reminds me of that weird, semi-death-thrash-core subgenre inhabited by bands like Pissing Razors. Executed poorly. So how do you explain it, given the wealth of information presented above? Here’s my theory as to how it all went down. It may be incorrect, but in my heart I BELIEVE IN MYSELF AND THE SCENARIO I CREATED BROTHERHOOD (chugga chug chug).

IN THE STUDIO: Jeff and Mike McP are happy – the guitarists Paul and Mike L have laid down some truly evil death metal. Listening to the unfinished tracks on headphones, they headbang furiously while the other two dudes casually, conspiratorially share an Italian cold cut grinder.

Jeff: Great job dudes! I can’t wait to belt out my boring blasphemy all over these sick riffs.

Mike McP: Fuck yeah, I am gonna drop some truly semi-inspired drumwork of Satanic majesty on this crazed up shit!

Paul and Mike L, trying not to giggle: Sure thing homies. Go to it.

While Jeff and Mike McP are finished recording vocals and drums respectively, the band listens to the rough mix and everyone seems pleased with the result. Jeff and Mike McP head home. Paul and Mike L pretend they have a few more things to finish up at the studio and hang back.

Paul: Hey Mike L, you got those shitty overly melodic riffs we wrote in secret?

Mike L: Hell yeah man! Fuckin’ Jeff and Mike McP will never know what hit ‘em! We’ll just sneak all this sleep-inducing drivel onto the final album, then make a break for the Connecticut border!

Both guffaw daemonically.

That’s how it happened, I’m pretty sure. It is the only possible answer to the puzzling amount of deathisms and the correspondingly non-deathy product. Mystery solved. Now I’ll just finish pulling the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot out of my ass and we’ll move on to the grind finale paragraph or two and score and band duties and track listing which you crave.

In the forums (where you should be right now, making friends and having a grande olde tyme instead of just reading these reviews), we have a topic about whether or not the CD booklet matters. In Penisless Rising’s case, a graphic in the liner notes saves this disc from being tossed like a salad in prison. It features some goat heads and some pentagrams and the letters R I D M – standing for Rhode Island Death Militia. How big is the RIDM scene? Uh, Vital Remains, and, uh, some dudes who used to be in Vital Remains? If this was a fighting force, the Nuge could probably take them all out in five minutes with a crossbow and a mouthful of his own urine. Nonetheless, I’m from RI and love death militias. So they score points from me despite having a disc full of songs whose conceptual end cannot come fast enough.

Time to carve out a score for this biatch. 1 point for the growl. 1 point for the RIDM. 1 point for being metal, though I’ll be damned if I can tell which type. Maybe their follow-up is better, but I’ll be double-dog-god-damned if I ever bother to find out.

- Information
- Released: 2006
- Label: Pathos Productions
- Website: Godless Rising MySpace
- Band
- Jeff Guslin: vocals
- Mike Lecam: bass, guitars
- Mike McPherson: drums
- Paul Flynn: guitars

- Tracklist
- 01. Sacrificed
- 02. Devour The Cross
- 03. Into Obscurity
- 04. Divine Blasphemy
- 05. Mortal Failures
- 06. Soulless