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Down My Throat: Real heroes die

01/04/06 || Statik Majik

After reviewing Down My Throat’s latest studio album, “Through the river of denial”, I thought that I could review their earlier album as well. Why not, I don’t have anything better to do at the moment.

Like I said in the other review, this band is supposed to be hardcore. Thrash-influenced even. Well, I’m too tired to repeat myself, but I just say that Down My Throat isn’t just hardcore but more of a hardcore/metal hybrid. There’s probably shitloads of influences you could recognize from their songs, especially if you’re more into this kind of music than I am. For me it sounds like decent, well played heavy metal with certain Entombed/Biohazard vibe. That’s far from accurate description, but you just have to deal with that for now. Or download few tracks from their site and make up your own mind.

I got this album few months before their latest effort was released, but I have to admit that I haven’t listened to “Real heroes die” that much. I’m not sure why, probably because I bought a bunch of albums during last fall and paid more attention to those instead. Well, I’m trying to make up for the loss now.

There’s 4 long years in between the two full-length albums Down My Throat has released so far. And nothings’ changed during that time. Soundwise these are almost identical, and I wouldn’t say that there’s been much progress in the songwriting either. Well, I liked their newer shit, so that should mean that I like this one too. Well, I do. They seem to follow the “if it ain’t broken, don’t fucking fix it” guideline literally. And why not, it’s not like they’re the first band to do so.

I’m positive that if I’d given this album more listens prior to reviewing their newer one, I might’ve dropped the score of the “Through the river of denial”. But since I’m reviewing these albums from the newer to the older, there’s nothing I do about it anymore. I sure as hell won’t go and change scores afterwards. Now who would want to do that in the first place?

Anyway, “Real heroes die” is fucking good release, especially for a debut (I’m aware that they’ve released singles and whatnot prior to this, but that’s not the issue here). This disc makes their newer stuff sound like a bland carbon copy of their debut. I say bland, because “Real heroes die” is stronger effort in every way. Although it suffers a bit from the same fault than “Through the river of denial”: not enough stand out tracks here and the vocals could sound more hostile, just yelling out the words doesn’t make you sound angry, you need some attitude in there as well. At first I thought this was the fault of the mix, but it looks like this is how the vocals were meant to sound in the first place. “Keeping on, keeping on”, where they obviously have a guest vocalist or two to throw in few growl-like vocal-lines, makes my point even more clearer. Maybe they should’ve let the guest vocalist responsible for the lowest grunts do all the vocals instead. I think at least I would’ve been satisfied with the possible outcome.

Despite all the nagging above, I have to admit that this band knows how to write/play catchy and straightforward tunes. And listening to “Real heroes die” is definitely an enjoyable experience.

7,5 /10.

Information
Released: 2001
Label: Fullhouse Records
Website: www.fullhouserecords.com/dmt
Band
Krisse: vocals
Antti: guitar
Jukka: guitar
Visse: bass
Arttu: drums

Tracklist
01. Burn
02. Real love
03. Tear my brain
04. Full of shit
05. Scenesters
06. Youth enrage
07. Shattered
08. Make my hell
09. War once lost
10. Real heroes die
11. Keeping on, keeping on

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