These Hungarians usually take a beating from the metal press for obvious reasons. Seriously, who wants to hear a third (world)-rate version of latter-Max era Sepultura and Soulfly? Not very many, eh? Lampooning What Doesn’t Kill Me… would be just as easy, but it’s very difficult to dislike this album. It’s a guilty pleasure of sorts.
Singer/guitarist Zoltan Farkas does his best Max impersonation all over this 13-song affair, but how can you not resist the ultra-dumb groove of “Nothing Left?” It’s such a blatantly simple (like, nu metal simple) track that you’re practically thrust back to the stone age. And that’s how most of this album runs. You’ve got a handful of dingy, bouncy riffs that would have set the world afire in 1998 and yet they translate well in 2009. Maybe we’re so accustomed to over-the-top guitar antics that such bonehead approach to riff-writing can charm us.
The blissfully dumb songs we’re referencing? Those would be “Love and Live,” “I Got It All” (which might be the best song
here), “New Life,” and “It’s Up To You.” All have one killer main riff that is lifted directly from the last three Soulfly albums and while there’s something inherently wrong with that statement, who cares?
Granted, Ektomorf may never be more than a first-rate imitation band, but one has to remember a great deal of metal is predicated on imitating things and imitating things well. May Ektomorf never come up with an idea of their own. Get this. Ye shall be surprised.
(This content originally appeared on Blistering.com)