And so another footsore traveller trudges across the harsh, unforgiving desert of metal without any real reason for making the journey, a pilgrim without purpose, easy prey for any species of predator who happens to mark his passing. On their latest, the boys in Dry Kill Logic sound like they’ve left their hearts in greener pastures, cycling through a series of anthem approximations in which heft, hook and catchiness all subordinate to arbitrary, often aimless chord progressions. It’s as if they know they’re dry-humping it, you know it, we all know it, yet some unflagging dedication to respecting genre formalisms and static, empty sound structures keeps us rooted to the spot, mildly disappointed, not really angry or disgusted so much as vaguely surprised that Dry Kill Logic haven’t seen fit to deliver, well, better songs. Here and there a riff sparks a half-smile, or maybe the start of a headbang, but the overall blandness and uniformity of the compositions always overwhelms, submerging choruses and melodies in thick, gray, featureless fog. Which may be precisely the band’s point, the crux of their oeuvre, the mission statement of an album with a title that does imply more than a wee bit of melancholy in its DNA, but man, it just ain’t keeping me interested. By the time they get around to offering a halfway interesting departure track — the conventionally acoustic but still pleasing ‘No Reason’, which closes the album — I’ve stopped caring.

» drykilllogic.com