Recent updates
- Maryland Deathfest 2010: Day 3 (29/07/10)
- Bleeding Through: Bleeding through (29/07/10)
- Neuromist: Move of thought (29/07/10)
- S.A.T.A.N: Unfinished chapter of S.A.T.A.N's comment to reality (29/07/10)
- Adveniat Hiems: Loki (28/07/10)
- Mordax: Slaughter (28/07/10)
- Eyes Set To Kill: Broken frames (28/07/10)
- Top 30 albums from 2000-2009: Altmer (28/07/10)
- Pain Of Salvation: Road salt one (27/07/10)
- Apocalyptic Visions: Doomsday device (27/07/10)
- read
Recent discussions
Devour the Domination
Not yet familiar with the bands hosted at Global Domination? Now's definitely the time to check 'em out. And what could be a better place for it than their Myspace-pages? Links below...
Reviews
(hed)p.e.: Insomnia
04/09/07 || Global Domination
This review was written by ex-staffer/cocksucker Stephen Fallen.
I volunteered to review “Insomnia” because I thought it would make great cannon fodder. Insulting crappy music and the artists that created it is Global Domination’s gift to the world, after all. The funny thing is, I almost want to like this album. Unlike a lot of the bad albums I’ve reviewed for this site, (hed)p.e is a fun band to listen to. They have a ton of energy and there are moments on “Insomnia” that had me smiling pretty hard.
First, the bad. (hed)p.e. embodies the phrase, “Jack of all trades, master of none”. Comparisons to Rage Against the Machine and System of a Down are a good starting place, but (hed)p.e’s mix is much less organic. Their sound has Dissociative Identity Disorder, leaping from pop punk to metal to hip-hop seemingly at random. Sometimes the genre hopping occurs on a track by track basis: “ComeOva2Nite” sounds like a Nelly song (especially the irritating chorus), while “Habeas” is a straight punk song. Other times, the transformation comes mid-song, such as how “Game Over” changes from a nu-metal song to a hip-hop one at the half-way mark.
All of that would be okay, except the music is extremely generic. There’s nothing inspiring about the riffs, be they punk, thrash or nu. All the drums are looped or altered in some fashion, and have zero personality. The bass has that annoying slapping sound that Korn made famous… but doesn’t use anymore, because even they are sick of it. Jahred Shane has a very passionate voice that slides from hardcore screams to smooth rap rhythms with far more skill than most of his peers. Unfortunately, the timbre of his vocals grate on my nerves after a song or two, he’s like a cartoon version of Zach La Rocha. That’s not a good thing.
The band’s lyrical repertoire is shticky and filled with stupid clichés. They borrow sex and drug promotion from hip-hop and poorly defined political dissent from punk. I’ll give Shane credit though, he delivers it all with an irreverence I enjoy. He knows it’s just dumb fun, and fuck you man, he’s doing it on purpose. For instance, “Game Over” ends with this neat quip, “You hear something and you don’t know what I’m talking about? Wikipedia that shit, stay informed man.” Anyone needing a Wiki entry to understand what are mostly lowest common denominator lyrics (“Oh I need some head, Oh I need some head” is the chorus) would be, for all intents a purposes, retarded. Yet, in Shane’s sardonic tone there is a hint of derision, as if he’d be a little disappointed in anyone that honestly considered Wiki a fountain of trustworthy information. There are touches like this spread throughout the entire album, little glimpses behind the curtain of stupid that make you think that there’s more here than meets the eye. I mean, I dunno if there actually is more there or not, but there might be.
On the other hand, looking at their MySpace page, everyone in the band dresses like a complete tool. Plus, they do a truly bad cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”, which they’re retitled “Children”. I may have given (hed)p.e. more credit than they deserve…
Anyway, “Insomnia” surprised me with its energy, but was everything I expected in terms of musical quality. It turns out that mixing crappy hip-hop, crappy punk and crappy metal results in (surprise!) a crappy final product. If I really wanted all those elements on one album, I’d make a mix tape of good songs.
4 out of 10.
(Side-rant: What the fuck is with all the terrible covers of rock standards this year? In addition to the horrible version of “For What It’s Worth” on this album, I’ve heard Otep ruin Nirvana, Oceans of Sadness insult Alice in Chains and A Perfect Murder fuck up Creedence so badly I couldn’t even recognize it. And those are just the ones I can think of off-hand. Jesusfuck guys, please stick to ruining your own shitty material)
- Information
- Released: 2007
- Label: Suburban Noize Records
- Website: p.e. MySpace
- Band
- Jahred Shane: vocals
- DJ Product: turntables
- Mark Young: bass
- Anthony Biuso: drums
- Jackson Benge: guitar
- Tracklist
- 01. Madhouse
- 02. Walk On By
- 03. Game Over
- 04. Habeas
- 05. Suffa
- 06. ComeOva2Nite
- 07. C2GU
- 08. RTO
- 09. Mirrorballin’
- 10. Tienanmen Squared
- 11. Children
- 12. Atlantis AD
- 13. Wind Me Up
- 14. Don’t Let Me Down