Buzzoven: At A Loss

Alternative Press magazine

Conquest Records

We crabwalk through the valley of the shadow of death! We stare into the abyss, and it looks away! We build our loft space on the slopes of Vesuvius! Tough talk, bubba, but anyone's whose seen Buzzoven's live act knows that the band's legendary hatred of their fellow man, and themselves, is no jive-turkey pose. It's just that no recording has captured that in the studio.

Sadly, that's still the case. First off, if you're going to start your record with a sample of Travis Bickle's infamous “someday a real rain is gonna come” rant from Taxi Driver, you have to deliver bigtime. But only a handful of songs here do. “Crawl Away,” with its gloom-heavy, tuned-out reverb distortion and Black Sabbath riffing, is a classic dirge-rock endurance test. So heinous is that track, in fact, that the overzealously paced follow-up—a sloppy hardcore number with enraged, piss-spitting vocals called “Whiskey Fit”—is almost refreshing by comparison. And who can resist the band's humorless, death-affirming take on Electric Light Orchestra's “Don't Bring Me Down”?

But there is something fundamental to the Buzzoven experience missing here. Despite ugly-as-Courtney arrangements, Dave “Dixie” Collins' foam-mouthed ranting, and an overall sound that's one part hardcore, one part death metal, and three parts of dead girlfriends, Buzzoven sound almost coy without the personal threat inherent in their live show—which I'll be avoiding for the rest of my life, for obvious reasons.

—John Pecorelli

Alternative Press magazine