Pessimist - Slaughtering the Faithful (Lost Disciple)

What we have here is a perfect example of how a FUBAR production and label politics can render a potentially good (or even great) album damn near unlistenable.

I like Pessimist, I really do... Cult Of The Initiated is one of my favorite post-'95 death metal albums, and Blood For The Gods, while somewhat inconsistent, had some absolutely brilliant tunes on it. Naturally, Slaughtering The Faithful was a highly anticipated album - three years in the making (although the writing was finished over a year ago - lineup shuffling and label issues delayed it several times), and with an entirely different lineup (aside from founder/head songwriter Kell), Pessimist and Lost Disciple told us to expect the band's most technical and uncompromising offering to date. And with Erik Rutan (fresh off a killer production job on Krisiun's Conquerors Of Armageddon) turning the knobs, I expected a release with a monstrous production to match its monstrous riffage... how wrong I (and just about everyone else who thought Rutan was a competent producer) was...

No mincing words - this album sounds like ass. The mixing is utterly abysmal: the guitars sound extremely muddy, and not in a good, Disciples of Mockery/AngelCorpse way either - more like an annoying buzzing sound behind overmixed and sloppy drums (more on that later) and the vocals are all but completely buried. Most of the time (I would say about 70-75%), it takes superhuman powers of concentration to pick out any distinctive riffs on the low end that don't turn to atonal mush while traveling along your Vestibulocochlear Nerve, and the ones you can make out, while quite good in and of themselves, don't really go anywhere as such. You can base whole songs around one or two riffs, but not when those riffs last for but a fraction of the song. There is some rather impressive lead work (esp. on the title track), but even here, the mixing becomes a problem, since the lower notes get pretty much lost in the blur. Just as a side note, from what I could tell the riffing style on this album seems somewhat different from that on the first two Pessimist releases, with a noticeable influence from the likes of Rebaelliun and Krisiun rearing its head.

Now on to the drumming... almost a year ago, I heard some rough mixes of a few of these songs and saw the band perform most of the album live and even back then, I could tell that John Grden was going to be a problem. The man simply could not keep up while blasting and was, from a stylistic perspective, decidedly bland. Still, I was willing to reserve judgment until I heard the final cut, and while there was Protools work done to improve Grden's timing on the album, the drumming is still quite weak and uncreative (not to mention boring). This wouldn't be as big of an issue if the drums were placed behind the guitars and vocals in the mix, but as it stands they are the most prominent instrument and severely detract from the overall quality of the recording. Thankfully, Grden was ousted prior to the album's release by Mick Kimock, who is, by all reports, a far superior skinsman.

As for the vocals, Ralph Runyan comes from the Steve Tucker school of vox gutturalis - he's a consistent and effective lower-midrange growler, but not terribly dynamic. I was not a fan of former vocalist Rob Kline's screechy highs, but they did inarguably provide the band with variety above and beyond that of the vast majority of newer death metal bands. "Reaper" Runyan's style may be easier to stomach, and he is certainly a very capable vocalist, but on an album where so much of the band's personality is lost in the mix, he becomes part of the problem.

It's really too bad... this could have potentially been a monumental album. Clearly, Kell spent a great deal of time perfecting the songs. But unfortunately, time and budget constraints, label politics and personnel issues turned it into such a mess. So to the Pessimist boys, I wish better luck next time and to Mr. Rutan... don't quit your day job.

By: Roman M. Temin