The Goat Review has grown quite considerably in the last few months. New writers often say one thing: The mid reviews are the hardest to write. As a now seasoned writer, I can safely say that it never really gets easier. Still, mid comes in different shades and within mid, different permutations of a basic 5/10 can be found. Some albums have great ideas, but squander their potential elsewhere. Others are extremely by the numbers, containing no surprises and only catering to hardcore fans of their chosen style. The hardest to review, however, are the ones that by any reasonable measure should be good, as they require an excruciating investigation as to why they don’t fully stick the landing.
Discontinued, the newest album by classic American brutal death metal band Malignancy, might be closer to good than mid but it still does not manage to quite get there. Initially, I am stumped about as to why, just as the opening paragraph described. On an objective level, Discontinued is a good brutal death metal record. The band has a constant drive for momentum and violence, ever pushing forward and they do so pulling many of the registers that brutal death metal has to offer. Syncopated grooves dominate the album rhythmically, yet it is upbeat and has a certain bounciness to it. The songs are linear almost to a fault, making it impossible to anticipate what comes next. Another certified strength of the band is how they approach their instruments in many different ways. The breadth of skronk present here is very pleasing to a seasoned brutal death metal veteran such as me and its fun to identify how the band plucks the strings to produce artificial and natural harmonies, pick-scrapes and the like.
The unfortunate truth is that objective quality does not and can not exist, though. Many of the things that I could describe as the band’s strengths are at times also their weaknesses. The linear structure of the songs might make them unpredictable but it also leads to them being rather unmemorable. Dropping the intensity occasionally could be a good thing here, as the album rarely lets a moment shine or linger on an idea too often. Similarly, the band could maybe vary the tempo a bit more, as the constant assault of similarly paced material lets me zone out more and more as the album goes along. Similarly, more vocal variety could help the album differentiate some of these parts. Most of the albums vocals are performed in a uniform low growl with only occasional switch-ups into a goblin-style shriek. The switch-up is always welcome and shows that maybe just a broader range of moods, tempos and tones is what Discontinued really would need.
