Misery Loves Co.: Not Like Them

To begin with, I have to admit that I honestly believe that this Swedish duo has never managed to produce anything even remotely interesting. On their debut album they were worshipping Ministry full-time; this time around Nine Inch Nails and Tool seem to be their latest heroes. You can basically sense that the guys spent all summer listening to their latest and lamest obsession; as a result, Not Like Them has a grand total of zero heavy tracks. Everything is sacrificed to the bone idol of mechanized sampling and mindless industrial schlock. What a waste, I tell ya. Occasionally they do hit a heavy note or two. "Them Nails" does show some promise and "A Million Lies" has little viciousness inside of it. But all of it cannot redeem their overall leaning towards an extremely dull "alternative" sound. Add to this a whole lot of awkward acoustic interludes, and you get the full picture of the album. Ballad-like tracks are especially lame; probably, because you can hear the emptiness of their lyrical content. C'mon, how many more Jim Morrison wanna-be poets can this world take? I for one have had enough.

Vocal parts are not too bad when Patrick does his aggressive screams accompanied by some solid distortion…. However, when he starts to do clean singing parts, I just wish it all would go away. This brings back the worst memories of the old Euro-pop videos that still haunt my childhood memories. Trust me, it wasn't something you'd want to see or hear on a regular basis. "Infected" has some decent "normal" vocal parts that are more or less tolerable due to the memorable main riff, but otherwise it's just bad.

The album does tend to get a little better during the end… Probably, all of their commercial hopefuls were placed in the beginning of recording (as if we'd never guess). "Feed The Creep" actually turns out to be a pretty good song for a minute or so (i.e. just take those aggressive guitar hooks and throw everything else away). Otherwise, there's not much to it. Actually that's when the fact that they are ripping off Tool becomes so obvious that it just makes me sick. What happened to using your own mind to write songs?

Earache have always been signing bands that pioneered the industrial/experimental music direction such as Scorn or Godflesh. However, Misery Loves Company is just too much of a commercial band to be considered a true Earache band, the way we are used to think of it…. I'd say that some of us who are very much into the whole new dub/gabber/etc scene will dig Not Like Them; the rest of us is better off waiting for the new Morbid Angel to come out. At least we know that this part of the label's history always delivers some killer metal.

Added: January 1st 2004
Reviewer: SoT Archives
Score:
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Language: english

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