ALBUM REVIEW: Degeneration – Wristmeetrazor
Far be it from anyone to accuse WRISTMEETRAZOR of not taking their work seriously. The US metalcore outfit recorded their third album Degeneration in near total seclusion in the woods of New Jersey, apparently allowing themselves only three breaks over 30 days of 12-hour studio sessions. It may all sound a bit much – and perhaps more than you’d think is needed to produce a killer metalcore record given all the stories of legendary albums that were knocked out in a couple of days or so – but ultimately whatever you make of their methods (or indeed their name) matters a lot less when presented with results that are as impossible to argue with as this.
Those familiar with their previous efforts will know that WRISTMEETRAZOR have established a clear pattern of evolution from one record to the next – always deliberate yet crucially never jarring or unnatural when presented with what came before. Degeneration is no different; with the band having tipped the scales of their initial screamo/metalcore hybrid far more towards the latter on 2021’s Replica Of A Strange Love, here they take the elements of industrial, groove and nu-metal that had started to work their way into their sound on that record and dial them up significantly to emerge with their heaviest and arguably best work yet.
It’s a complete package too – again as you might expect from a band who never do anything by halves; everything from the artwork to the promo shots to the video for lead single Trepanation highlights a late 90s/early 00s aesthetic that is borne out in the music itself – all FEAR FACTORY and goth clubs and Resident Evil and The Matrix and The More Things Change-era MACHINE HEAD as well as perhaps the more expected shades of BLEEDING THROUGH and KILLSWITCH ENGAGE. The nostalgia is potent but it’s not a crutch; it may evoke a certain time and that may even earn it some extra favour among some listeners, but the strength of the songwriting speaks for itself.
Though the band’s penchant for pulling from diverse yet often not ridiculously disparate influences remains firmly intact, Degeneration feels more focused than any of its predecessors. Most of all it deals in an abundance of muscular industrial metalcore bangers like the early back-to-back highlights of Static Reckoning and the aforementioned Trepanation, and indeed many others as the record goes on, but even when it deviates from this as its bread and butter as it does in the more heavily electronic DogdayGod or the ultra-chaotic 50-second rager Culled And Forgotten, for example, the album still feels far less scattershot that one might have fairly said of moments on both Replica and Misery Never Forgets before it.
It’s all held together by a fantastic mix from producer Randy LeBeouf, his work with bands like JESUS PIECE, DYING WISH and KUBLAI KHAN TX perhaps all the guarantee one needs of the huge, beefy sound he grants WRISTMEETRAZOR here. Degeneration feels tall and imposing – mechanised even – which again suits the vibe the band are going for perfectly. It’s also notably more sparing in its use of clean vocals than their last outing, the band’s growth to a five-piece having freed up frontman Justin Fornof to hand bass duties over to new recruit Userelaine and focus solely on delivering a visceral, aggressive performance that proves a worthy vessel for the record’s themes of misanthropy, apoplexy and hypocrisy.
All this and more adds up to what is ultimately just a fantastic metalcore record – perhaps not the only one WRISTMEETRAZOR have made in their time, but still surely their best and most violent. It somehow feels both nostalgic for 20 odd years ago but also futuristic and dystopian in its industrial influences and cold, steely production, with these two features combined with the invariably excellent standard of the music itself resulting in something of a timelessness that could and should last for many years to come.
Rating: 9/10
Degeneration is set for release on March 29th via Prosthetic Records.
Like WRISTMEETRAZOR on Facebook.