Terror Regime

Excuse me for a minute while I try to catch my breath and have a drink of water. If you know the band Jungle Rot then you will understand why I would need to make that first statement but just in case you’re not familiar with the group, they are a death metal band that wails on all fronts. Putting out their seventh album, Terror Regime, I found myself listening to 11 songs for about 35 minutes that had me screaming and thrashing my head around. Right now I blame Jungle Rot for tonight’s headache but I’m going to bet I’m not the only one they’ve given headaches to.
Ok, that headache remark might sound kind of bad, especially if my Dad read this he would agree that it gave him a headache as well. I don’t mean it that way, my headache is due for 2 reasons, maybe 3 depending on if you count screaming a cause of a headache, but I have mine because I had my volume loud and two because I was thrashing my head around too much. Though I stick with my declaration in saying that Jungle Rot is to blame because there’s no other way to listen to this music than to have the volume loud and it just makes you want to head bang as you do listen to it. In fact I tried to listen to it as I typed this review but a few problems presented themselves, namely I couldn’t type as fast as the music played, I had problems focusing on the screen as I bounced, and I can’t pushing the wrong keys. This is a brutal album of songs that amazingly enough has a really good beat being played out. The sheer energy being put out is overwhelming because it does wear you out from listening to it.
With a lot of death metal bands they make the mistake in thinking that all they have to do is play their instrument loud and fast while the lead singer just screams at the top of his/her lungs. This does not make a death metal song, that makes just lots of hard playing and screaming set to some sort of beat. Jungle Rot does what songs are supposed to do, give us a beat that has a good tempo, matches the rhythm of the vocals, and lyrics that we can connect to. Other than the guttural vocals, the loudness, and the speed being played, Jungle Rot has put together songs that fit what make for a good song. On the downside though most of the songs do keep with the same format and though they are all bursting with the amount of power they are being played at they still follow the same overall sound. I liked the sound but it’s still the same where I was hearing similar structures of fast guitar riffs and strong drums. While the vocals match the songs feel there where a few times that I didn’t like how rough they sounded. With one song there’s a moment where it just sounded like DJM was clearing his throat and that was not a nice sound. Still, the songs are well formatted, they are played with extreme energy, and for being so fast and loud they have a thought out and well played beat.