What do you say when the music doesn't move you? What if it stops moving you altogether and you're stuck in a black hole where the one thing that pleases you most doesn't do it? It's like a junkie once they've gone too far past highs and into "maintaining".

This music makes me feel that way, desperate to find something, ANYTHING to get me off and make me feel that magic. I'm talking about the magic of sitting in front of your stereo at a young age, marveling at the sounds that sent you to other places and made you forget how crummy life can be. The joy of reading a review of an album and rushing to the store with whatever money you could scrape together to buy that hunk of black distilled dinosaur. Then setting it carefully on the turntable, cranking it loud, popped the needle onto dead wax and away we go! Well here we are, years later and countless dead brain cells murdered by monotony and misadventure and I'm terrified. The machines have taken over my friend. SARISSA's music is so cold and heartless, it makes me long for KRAFTWERK (who were too busy humping machines to feel). Every note is perfectly in place on all sixty bazillion tracks and not one with any soul. This could be a computer program for all I know.

"Antiseptic" is the word I'm seeking. They've cleaned the garage garbage right out. Remember when you winced at imperfections? I'm begging for one. Give me one little off-note to prove you aren't a bunch of machines programmed to kick out the sanitized opera metal. Show me you aren't trying to be the Leni Reifenstahl's of rock'n'roll. This is "Triumph Of The Will" set to DREAM THEATER's annoying opera metal fugues. It sounds like a million factory machines churning out music that is so perfect that it is imperfect. I'd sooner listen to a combo of high school slobs whip out their first try at "Iron Man" - at least I know they're real. The only sign of real life involved in this package is the photo of the band on the inside. Even the artwork looks like some computer game you'd see in the "price slasher" bin, perched next to the checkout line at Meijer.

I know they really want to bring some sort of highbrow concept to metal, maybe make a merger deal with classical music to make it seem respectable. But when has metal been about respectability? The very thing that attracts people to metal, punk, whatever is it's sea of middle fingers to everything. No one listens to metal to "unwind" or "appreciate the great works". Our great works are heaped upon the trash pile of tastelessness. Our icons are trash chucked out of car windows onto the side of the road. I will never respect flash and style over gut feeling. Oh - and "Holiday Spice" Pepsi sucks dick. No, seriously.

- Two Tub Tony

OFFICIAL SITE: www.sarissa.info

MP3 SOUND SCRAP: Bleed

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