Baboon Rising - Friendly Agrarian Tower Review
by Matt Hensch
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Baboons are indeed funny creatures. They eat bananas, have funny facial markings, and their asses are red; these silly monkeys also lack fundamental brain function, thus making them mentally inferior during many activities. Taking after our retarded primates is the elderly Baboon Rising, a band with several years of activity and countless full-lengths that once played a theme song for some show nobody has ever seen, which is Baboon Rising's only bragging right. I bought Friendly Agrarian Tower under positive impressions, but that certainly is not how I feel now. It is so bad, even an f*cking monkey looks like Stephen Hawking in comparison!
So, what is Baboon Rising? The answer, my friends, is some godforsaken mix of traditional heavy metal, molested by Megadeth-like influences and Pantera sandwiches. Upon stirring with a sh*t-eating grin, this record affirmatively practices said touches in awful ways: extremely boring riffs swimming into both generic and vague waters, a lackluster singing attempt, haphazard dabbles into atrocious changes, and lengthy notes for really no reason. Solos? They suck too. Honestly, every musical combination makes one wish some magical void would absorb all this crap into eternity, not to mention t he lyrics suck uncontrollably. Songs like "Pencil Eraser Aftertaste" and "Weapon of Honey Production" seriously make me wonder whether or not Dr. Seuss was involved in Baboon Rising's writing of material, but I guess one would typically focus on abstract lyrics if your music was not any good, hence the present poetic nonsense.
However, the real comedy within this atrocity comes when the death metal truck dumps brutal instrumentation upon our hideous landscape, and I will proclaim it is a real thigh-slapper. During exploration of the vocal abyss, one will notice several of these average sections are laced in strange grumbling noises, almost like a pseudo-slurp or half-growl, which are – believe it or not – actual growling attempts. Sure tossing in low barks is fine usually, unless one cannot do it properly like Friendly Agrarian Tower most elegantly shows; an effort to blastbeat also succumbs to such illness. The "blastbeats" are essentially a bit faster than your typical fast snare popping, yet nowhere near what most death metal drummers could do by simply twitching. The only thing worse than trying something and failing miserably at it is glorifying whatever failure occurred like it is actually worthwhile; Baboon Rising can only dream these "death metal" tweaks are enjoyable.
Before I came into Baboon Rising's world, I always wondered why such an aged band never got any recognition or press after countless full-lengths, and the answer has been screaming at me like a cracked-out banshee once Friendly Agrarian Tower entered my personal space. Now this CD has a special feature many bad records are able to avoid: it lacks beef in all vital areas. Typically, there might be a cool song or some killer riffing section on occasion, but not here; Baboon Rising managed to screw everything up, and I think it takes real talent to accomplish such poorness. Do not bother with this horrid bowel movement.
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Baboon Rising - Friendly Agrarian Tower Rating:1.0
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