I guess you have to give Otep Shamaya a little bit of credit for wanting to stick to her guns, still stubborn enough to keep the nu-metal flames burning now well over a decade after that style of music faded into the sunset. Generation Doom is the bands seventh album, and it's a raucous affair, containing plenty of political opinions and expletives to go along with the musical bombast. Production wise, this one's pretty fiery, the myriad of vocal styles from Ms. Shamaya crisp yet brutal, the guitar riffs and pounding rhythms in your face, and the overall delivery crystal clear and massive. Whether you like this sort of thing however is the key to your enjoyment level; there's no denying the catchy nature of tracks like "Lords of War", "Zero", "In Cold Blood", and "No Color", Otep's blend of growls, screams, and clean melodic crooning flying all over the place amid bombastic musical accompaniment that mixes death metal, pop, rap, industrial, and techno styles into a bizarre mashup of sound.
Despite the fact that a few of these songs have definite breakout potential, especially to an audience who craves anything related to teenage angst, so much of Generation Doom seems so 2002, so over the top, with too many styles criss crossing and an over abundance of f-bombs needlessly being screamed at the listener. Otep is obviously a very talented woman, and like I said above, give her credit for staying the course, but Generation Doom just seems 15 years too late to really make the impact it could have.
Track Listing
- Zero
- Feeding Frenzy
- Lords Of War
- Royals
- In Cold Blood
- Down
- God Is A Gun
- Equal Rights, Equal Lefts
- No Color
- Lie
- Generation Doom
- On The Shore