Dead to the World

I have to say I'm disappointed in this. I've been following Meliah Rage, off and on, for twenty years, ever since Kill to Survive. I missed their last few works, since I hadn't heard they were that great, and the last album of theirs I have is Barely Human, which I thought kicked some serious ass. I was psyched to get this, and now I'm just wondering what happened.

First off, the production is inexcusably soft and weak, with the guitars muted and the vocals so low in the mix they sound a mile away. The recording on this assures you not to concern yourself with this muffled, muttering noise. The songwriting is similarly inexplicable, as it is soft, slow, and almost completely lacking in the hard-hitting riffs and memorable choruses this band is supposed to be good at. There are long, tweaky mood passages that sound like something off a post-rock album, and extremely long sections with a bunch of inaudible narration or some speech from a movie that is also mixed so low you can't find it anything but annoying. I can hear there are some decent riffs on this, but they are buried in a bunch of self-indulgent bullshit and half-assed performances. Skip it.