Tearing out of hockey country comes CURSED, a crazed five-piece death/hc sort of affair infatuated with blood, anger, speed, and…um, goat people. All of these themes are welcomed with open arms at the ‘dog site, except when the music sucks. Fortunately for CURSED, the music on this disc doesn’t suck…it just isn’t all that exciting.

It’s like that gift you get from your Aunt Marie. I mean, you know she means well. Sometimes she gets it right…like that year she got you that cool coffee machine for your birthday. But oftentimes, despite her obvious sweet intentions and deep pockets, the gifts lying beneath that sparkly paper are just plain disappointing. Who needs another turtleneck sweater anyway?

Yeah, upon seeing the lineup, affiliation with the Deathwish label, and artwork associated with “Cursed Two”, I was hoping for total death-thrashing ecstasy (see our review of the THANATOS disc), but sadly, this disc just comes across as a pretty thin-sounding deathpunk thing. Yeah, I know these guys have played in some of Toronto's seediest places, alongside blasters like TWO KNIVES, but truthfully, if I hadn’t glimpsed at the bio stuff ahead of time, I would have figured this was the product of a bunch of kids in a CONVERGE cover band, taking a stab at some originals. Again, I don’t want to say this thing totally sucks, because the truth is, if you haven’t heard CONVERGE (especially the last couple of records that really rip) and you worship HATEBREED then you may enjoy this. The disc isn’t without some cool riff / drum interplay, like "Head of the Baptist" which kinda got me ‘ead bobbin’ for a moment. The tracks seem linked together like a loose concept record, and the lyrics are thought-provoking and dark to say the least, but I personally have more than my fair share of mediocre death metal albums with cool lyrics, and they NEVER get a spin. Why would I want to add to the collection? I’d give this a C- or something like that if I were the grading type. The quest for sonic annihilation continues.

- Marchman

OFFICIAL SITE: www.your-funeral.com/cursed

MP3 SOUND SCRAP: Cursed

RELATED ITEMS: No related articles at this time.