Born to Murder the World – The Infinite Mirror of Millenial Narcissism

[schema type=”review” name=”Born to Murder the World – The Infinite Mirror of Millenial Narcissism” description=”Label: Extrinsic Records” author=”Sarp Esin” pubdate=”2018-08-24″ ]

Born to Murder the World is one of the most aptly-named bands out there.  It is the unholy union of Shane Embury (Napalm Death), Mick Lenney (Anaal Nakrath) and Duncan Willis (Fukpig), all veterans in their own right who have spent their careers doing just what their collective name suggests – although not in the way that you might suspect.

In a nutshell, Born to Murder the World is what happens when you take veterans and grindcore, shower it with black metal influences, program a drum machine to accommodate, add subtle touches of hardcore and crust into the mix, forget what “slowing down” means (or decide to ignore that such a phrase exists,) start pulling the trigger and never stop.  Don’t expect keyboards or atmospheric passages (well, there is an interlude…) or anything that will offer you any respite from the speed and ferocity of the supergroup’s debut, The Infinite Mirror of Millenial Narcissism (henceforth TIMoMN.)

Let’s first put your doubts aside: Born to Murder to World may be a supergroup, but there are certain things that keep it from being just a supergroup.  Primarily, this is the balance that is struck between the influences of the main driving force Embury and Lenney.  What’s on offer in TIMoMN are an unholy hybrid of grind chords (heh), tremolo-picked black metal riffs.  In songs like Negativity Plague or Penetrate the Descent, this balance is used to great effect.  This is not to say that you always get this mixture.  There are other influences, more subtly felt: for instance, Corruption Feeds Deception has death metal in it.  Some of the songs also have a bit of crust atmosphere infused into their bones, so keeping things interesting is not a problem.

Now, all that is good but there is just one major problem.  TIMoMN is brickwalled to oblivion.  How bad is it? Well, allow me to show you what it looks like:

The entire album is horrifically over-compressed. You can actually hear it clipping, but good luck hearing any bass, or snares, if you are listening to this on anything less than studio-grade equipment.  I actually broke out my monitor headphones for this and the effect was only made worse.  As a result of the mindlessly low DR value, the sound isn’t heavy or volatile, it’s bloated and tiresome.  At fifteen minutes, TIMoMN wears you down not with the music itself but with the production.  Worse still, there are moments where a better dynamic range could’ve created a positively apocalyptic atmosphere.  The black metal influences, when brought to the fore, like parts of Genesis Misconception or Negativity Plague, touch upon a moody sort of darkness, but all that is lost in the ridiculously oppressive, eardrum-destroying sheer overkill loudness of the mastering.

This could’ve been somewhat rectifiable if the mix didn’t crank up the kick drums to the point where their dessicated, near-constant tapping overshadows the rest of the drums (especially the snares) and cut into the guitars.  The end result sounds so choked and lifeless that it has purple finger marks on the neck of its corpse.

Thing is, The Infinite Mirror of Millenial Narcissism feels incredibly rushed.  Credit where it’s due, the veterans that created this unseemly beast do a stellar job showing their chops and make their blend organic.  But the production is devoid of any nuance whatsoever and that severely dampens the impact of the album.  If you don’t mind that, if you’re a fan of any of the bands these gentlemen were in, or you want something hard and fast (not to mention LOUD,) then go for it.  For others, there are better (and far better sounding) albums out there.

Line-up:
Duncan “Drunk” Wilkins (Fukpig) – vocals
Shane Embury (Napalm Death) – guitars, bass
Mick Kenney (Anaal Nakrath) – guitars, bass, programming

Tracklist: 01. When the Heart is Violated 02. Brutality Alchemist 03. Genesis Misconception 04. The Virus Is Within Us All 05. As He Creates So He Destroys 06. Penetrate the Descent 07. The Death of Dreams 08. Poisoning Purity 09. Negativity Plague 10. Corruption Feeds Desception 11. Tiyanak 12. How Barren Is Life Without Sin

Born to Murder the World on Bandcamp

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