Superjoint Ritual - Use Once And Destroy Review
Posted by Evocator Manes on 09.06.2002
, caustic, ferocious, fierce, Blisteringrelentless and scathing. Brutal in 3 shades of red.
Philip Anselmo, lead vocalist of Pantera and Down, is clearly not afraid of experimenting and broadening his horizons. On this, his fourth released side project - or, for short, his side-side- side project - we find Phil picking up the axe and laying our scalps wide open and bleeding with it.
This album is the musical equivalent of opening up your arms up to your shoulders and not only watching it bleed, but reveling in the agony of openly flowing wounds. Perhaps a better example of a physical comparison would be to find a blender, remove the pitcher, attach the blade, set the machine on purée and insert into your ear. The album’s attack on the senses is not restricted to the audio, oh no. The album art is designed to visually be brutality personified.
From devils, naked and otherwise, to pentagrams to Confederate flags to marijuana leaves and beyond, nearly every cornerstone of the perception of evil is touched upon. I halfway expected to find razor blades inside the gate fold of the booklet when I opened it and after I heard the album, I wondered why I hadn’t found those damn razors. However, we probably are not so much concerned with what the packaging looks like as to what the sound is like.
Anselmo again leans heavily on Black Sabbath and reaches deep into the pages of Tony Iommi on this one, tempering it with the fusion of punk ala the Entombed Uprising album. It has been said that the mark of a great album is whether or not you wind up driving faster while playing it in the car and if you don’t find yourself unexpectedly clipping the red line while this is blaring through your car speakers, see a doctor. You are probably comatose.
Anselmo must have vocal cords of steel as he shrieks, growls and screams his way through this entire album. Every song is a throat-ripper, yet with the quality of his rhythm section, borrowing a bit from the usual suspects in Down and Hank Williams III pounding the living Christ right out of his bass, the constant yelling never manages to become wearing. The disc came out with a couple of bonus songs, Starvation Trip and Little H, which sound like they were recorded on a microcassette recorder.
Those songs are not quite throw- aways but nowhere near up to the assault standards set by the previous 16 on the disc. There is really precious little filler here, every song carries the impact of a knockout punch, from the opening instrumental Oblivious Maximus to it’s successor It Takes No Guts to the fury of 4 Songs to the slug of Creepy Crawl.
The material is much darker here than Down; both bands are darker than Pantera. The sound is slightly closer to Pantera, but advanced into hyper-aggression. 2002 has been a promising year for music thus far and the release of this disc plays no small part in that. Buy this at your own peril, but still buy it. Highly recommended unless you are a pansy, in which case the new-old Britney Spears or Backdoor Boys await.
The 411: , caustic, ferocious, fierce, Blisteringrelentless and scathing. Brutal in 3 shades of red.
