THE INCURABLE TRAGEDY

The Incurable Tragedy, if anything, reminds us that Into Eternity still has a death fetish. After naming their last two albums using a verb and a noun, they decided to go adjective-noun, and the result is a bit less intriguing. Fans should find solace in knowing that the songs are still a bunch of erratic musical emissions resulting from the band's said fetish. The result is most certainly an auditory tragedy which apparently has no cure, much like my awful pun usage.

I will not joke further, and have already withheld a lot of my scathing remarks, though, because band leader Tim Roth recently lost two close friends, and both his parents. It's got to be a tough time for him right now, and my condolences go out to him.

Still, I must say that this record is not worth your time. There are some great riffs, and they cleared up the production problems of the last record, but everything is thrown together so thoughtlessly as always. Maybe the band does think this stuff out, but if so, they're simply oblivious to how awkward their transitions are. They don't make sense and they don't accomplish what I think they're trying to. Plus, the vocals have gotten even more grating as the band now has both sung and rasped shrieks along with those death growls. If you are a metal fan, especially one who likes both black metal and Judas Priest, you will have no problem dealing with this aspect, but hopefully the speed and pseudo-prog shifts will not fool you into thinking this is intelligent or, for that matter, good. These guys can play, but they can't write. I could deal with the erratic writing two albums ago, but I expected them to tweak their approach, work more ideas into each song and develop a more natural flow. Instead, the band is more repetitive and spastic than ever. Oh well.

This is a repeat offense, and even if its production is a whole lot better than that on The Scattering of Ashes the writing is worse, not to mention the group has hardly progressed. Pin it to their recent tragedies (pun not really intentional), fine, but albums can only legitimately (to some degree - I don't buy into any of that) ride on a sob story (to some degree - I don't buy into any of that) if something good came out of it. Even if there are some solid riffs and/or ideas here and there, I can't recommend this to anyone. My interest in this band has completely vanished, and I'm not sure they will ever reach their potential.