It's exceedingly difficult to review albums like Memorrhage's self-titled. Not because it's not good. Not because it wouldn't be fun to describe the music for someone (like, for example, a washing machine filled with vomit, tumbling down a fire escape, and landing on the roof of a convertible full of propane canisters parked next to an open flame... disgusting and explosive!). It's just the opposite. It's sooooooooo good, and I could write about it for hours, but anything I could say about it, you could basically be trimmed down to some variation on, "On god, shit slaps!" Because, holy fuck, it just does! The album is essentially Garry Brents's tribute to the nu-metal and extreme action films he enjoyed in his misspent, miscreant youth... and it's very relatable. Apparently, nu-metal was one of the first genres of metal that the one-man musical pantheon (responsive for such perniciously inspired acts as Cara Neir and Homeskin, two amongst... I couldn't tell you how many other projects, but it's a lot!), and it's a style that still speaks to him to this day. It's an expression of something thoroughly simpatico to my lived experience. The first album I listened to in its entirety was Korn's Follow the Leader, and the first album I purchased with my own money was Cypress Hill's Skull and Bones. I have super vivid, incredibly fond memories of how twisted and aggressive that stuff came across to me as a kid, and in some ways, I feel like I've been chasing the highs that music gave me ever since- which is why the crisp ferocity and faithful rendition of the nu metal's distinguishable penchant for belligerence is so satisfying here. It might not be exactly as I remember this stuff as a testosterone-charged, zit-plagued teen, but it gets the feeling right in some pretty important ways. Sort of like how the Brutal Doom mod updates the violence of the original Doom to make it as visceral and subversive as you remember the game being when you used to play it late at night, in the pitch dark on the family PC after everyone else had gone to bed, Memorrhage is as much a kick in the chest and as infectiously groovy as when you first caught Static-X screaming over the airwaves of your little backwater town's only rock station. It succeeds in making the present experience of these sounds as intense as the emotions that you attach to your memories of their source and inspiration from 20 years ago- which is a really fucking accomplishment. The one thing that I think makes Memorrhage a little jarring is that the rough and metallic quality of the chords tend to veer more towards early metalcore a la Converge, but there are still plenty of record scratches, inky, post-grunge reverb ripples, and big, grim, throwdowns to make it a contender when stacked up against anyone else attempting a similar revival, or even stuff by established genre players back in the day. I feel like I'm belaboring the point if I say any more, so I will just leave you with this: Give Memorrhage a chance, and I promise it will turn your expectations inside out.
