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Dope – Group Therapy 
The Hobo Review

Dope formed sometime around the late nineties in New York City, and since their debut release Debonaire in 1999 the band has managed to release an EP every year to date. So now comes the bands 5th album, Group Therapy. Although they claim that they ‘had to sell dope’ on the side when first starting up to buy ‘tapes, recording sh#t and equipment,’ I naturally believe none of it, passing it off as an immature little gimmick and an attempt to resonate with the legions of melodramatic teenagers with self inflicted pains making their own lives some kind of fraudulent hell.

Anyway, enough politics, lets get to the music. The track Falling Away acts as your stock standard numetal track, full of derivative and rehashed guitar work and tired and tried subject matter. The next track Bitch sports a haunting sample of Aqua’s smash hit Barbie Girl (yes Greenmuse, I’m scared too.) The song starts off with a cool little line ‘lets have a bachelor party with chick, and guns, and booze, and firetrucks’ but its pretty much downhill from there. With lyrics like ‘one, two f*** you’ it ends up being pretty darn average and echoing a lot of other songs we’ve all heard before.

I Am is a rather catchy little ditty, but yet again full of lyrical clichés and lower level musicianship – ‘sometimes I wish we’d agree to disagree,’ ‘f*** you I am what I am.’ The song Motivation ends up sounding like an early Static X demo whereas Sing resembles a lethargic pop rock song – almost reminiscent of some of Manson’s Holy Wood. 

Indeed, on the album there are lows and even lower lows. Paranoia sounds like a sad Mudvayne track ‘its para-f***ing-noia’ whereas Bring It On becomes more of an ultra-imitative boring numetal track. Another Day represents yet another cheesey soft rock song, Burn bores me with the hook ‘burn the mutha f***er to the ground.’ The album at least closes with the slightly catchy prog-metal track Easier.

Dope ends up lying somewhere between Spineshank, Mudvayne, Korn – and even at times Marilyn Manson. The vast body of tracks are derivative, but nonetheless catchy – as most numetal bands are. The band however fails to create a consistent unique sound, switching between derivative numetal to soft pop/rock several times on the album. The band is far from compelling, but also far from totally abysmal, they are however constantly restricted by a gross overuse of the words ‘f***’ ‘mutha f***’ and the uber popular phrase ‘f*** you.’

When I was knee high to a grasshopper, I quite enjoyed Dope’s fist EP Life. The band however, no longer possesses the necessary elements of flair or originality to keep me interested for longer than two minutes. Its not horrible, it’s not good but it lands in the inscrutable gray mass of painful mediocrity. It won’t change your world, it won’t depress you to the point of tears, but it’ll leave you teetering on a level of dull indecision as you fight within yourself to work out whether your purchase was a total waste of time and currency – or not. 


CD Info 

Dope – Group Therapy
Genre: Numetal
For Fans Of: Static X, Spineshank
Rating
 
 
Tracks:
1.Falling Away 
2.Bitch 
3.I Am 
4.Motivation 
5.Sing 
6.Now Is The Time 
7.Paranoia 
8.Bring It On 
9.Another Day Goes By 
10.Today Is The Day 
11.Burn 
12.Easier 
13.So Low
Listen to samples and Purchase this CD online


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