Misery Index
Discordia

Napolitano intends to grant clemency to Sofri and (so it is rumored) to grant an amnesty for minor crimes; this could be a starting point to pardon my review on Cannibal and finally free it from Debaser's dungeon... In any case, I return confidently to torment you with my chronic obsession for extreme metal... appreciate the sacrifice since tomorrow I have my final exams...

The Misery Index, a band from Maryland, was born in the second half of the nineties from the ashes of Dying Fetus: more precisely, although the latter are still active, a couple of members "defected" creating this "tasty" musical reality.

After a good performance in the 2002 EP "Overthrow", they signed with the imposing Nuclear Blast, one of the leading labels in the field of extreme metal and "not so extreme" metal. Needless to say, from that moment on they somewhat dropped their pants in the face of record company commitments, releasing a CD in 2003 like "Retaliate" that pleased everyone a bit by giving up the intransigence of the aforementioned mini CD; however, the work proved to be unassailable because, commercialized or not, it succeeded in the aim that this genre proposes, that is, to express subversive feelings of every order in the most effective way possible.

Their sound, a mix between the New York hardcore punk scene and the most violent Brutal Death, was indeed something really new and young, a revisited version of the proposal of the founders' former group, Dying Fetus, to be precise. Remembering the power, linearity, and consequent easy "digestibility" of that record, I set out to acquire this recent endeavor of the band this time under Relapse Records, "Discordia", on which I had great hopes: unfortunately many of my expectations were unmet, mainly due to the lack of new ideas and compositions capable of "captivating" the listener.
The formula has remained unchanged compared to the previous album, perhaps too unchanged, devoid of evolution and terribly equal; however, I can't say this is the main flaw because as I said before the proposal still had a lot to say in my opinion. The biggest flaw is the composition of the songs on this "Discordia" which, although refined and very elaborate, ends up leaving the listener with a handful of flies.

Sudden time changes, very tight rhythms, and guitars of immense violence are not enough to engage those who remember the old songs, which were anything but colorless and tasteless. The tendency remains to deprive the purest Brutal Death of those dark and heavy atmospheres that connoisseurs love so much, replacing them with others typical of Punk, with broader but more aggressive breath: however the result is unsatisfactory and, apart from a few episodes like the opener "The Unmarked Graves", the songs are only lukewarm, completely deprived of the fury that was ingrained in the songs of "Retaliate".
Nothing to say about the technical level, still very high for each member; the drummer maintains very high speeds rich in syncopations and physically very demanding. One cannot say that originality is his strong point (his drumming is quite repetitive and consolidated on blast beats and other typically Punk rhythms), but his performance is still good and capable of developing a massive dose of anger. The same goes for the guitarists, perhaps technically less prepared (the parts are based on devastating but not impossible to execute chords) but functional to the type of mood they want to evoke; some riffs become more persistent, so to speak "melodic", present to a lesser extent even in the previous record, although they fail to move (in the etymological sense of the term) very much.

As usual, not even a shadow of the bassist except in very few breaks, mainly due to a production that, although crisp, ends up highlighting only guitars and drums. Above all this, a good growling, decidedly clean and "high" but certainly more appealing and fierce than that of John Gallagher, former colleague of the singer in question during the time spent in Dying Fetus. You will have understood that the deficiencies are absolutely not of a technical or compositional nature, but concern precisely the uselessness of this record, endowed with two or three nice songs and another seven or eight which are nothing but abortions: a diluted mood (despite the continuation thematically of angry diatribes against the System) and a sound not refreshed at all make "Discordia" a decent work but one on which you can pass over without any qualms of any kind, although there remains a very bitter taste in the mouth for what, on a potential level, these five Americans would be able to do.