SHE SAID DESTROY - Time Like Vines

SHE SAID DESTROY
Time Like Vines
Candlelight USA
4/10




As the dissonant, mostly basal beginning of “Armageddon, Anyone?” unfurls, it’s easy to peg She Said Destroy as just another batch of death metal pretenders. While the quartet is sufficiently skilled at playing their instruments, they severely lack focus and direction. Song parts switch around in a bid to add a technical bent to their death metal approach, but the arrangements leave the listener befuddled and bored as opposed to enveloped.

As the band’s frontman, UGMOD gives a flat, uninspiring performance that’s not only one-dimensional, it’s frankly unskilled. Although the group is apt to launch into a spider web lick that shows they have a bit of dexterity, She Said Destroy sounds like a mouse trapped in a maze, running in every direction but too small-minded to take the shortest distance between two points and keep their goal in mind as the songs play out.

Muffled production aims to mask the drudgery and even slick riffing ultimately leads to a murky fog of sonic misdirection. Thousands of bands are producing similar music that’s much more effective, listenable and worthy of attention than this.

Certainly, it can be gleaned that these gentlemen are fair and perhaps even above-average musicians. Yet rudimentary songwriting and a complete lack of focus still hold them back during the strumming, grunting murk of “Der Untergeher” and the confounding, directionless “Beyond The Borders Of Our Minds.” This music is just too damn messy to be enjoyable. Much of the dissatisfaction can be attributed to the shaky production, where the drums need more compression and the vocals suffer from flatline-inducing predictability.

There’s nothing here that’s going to convince big fans of the style that She Said Destroy is anything to be particularly excited over. “Time Like Vines” is just one great big fat ol’ blasting death metal “Duh,” repeated ad infinitum.


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