All too often, artists who claim that their music is "impossible to categorize" or "beyond category" are guilty of wishful thinking. They have deluded themselves into believing that their music is totally unique and innovative when in reality, they are quite easy to categorize. But some artists are more difficult to categorize than others -- and while
A Beautiful Sickness isn't impossible to categorize, it isn't easy to categorize either.
Project: Failing Flesh, a band that includes singer/bassist Eric Forrest (of
Voivod and
E-Force fame) and guitarist Tim Gutierrez (also with
E-Force), could be -- for lack of a better term -- categorized as alternative metal. Of course, alt-metal is a far-reaching term that has been used to describe everyone from
Hammerlock to
Neurosis to
Ministry to
Limp Bizkit; so calling
A Beautiful Sickness alt-metal isn't being overly specific. If one needs to pin this 40-minute CD down stylistically, perhaps it's best to describe the disc as cyber-metal/electro-metal by way of thrash metal with traces of death metal/black metal at times and a hardcore/metalcore vocal style. Forrest's screaming vocals suggest hardcore and metalcore, but
A Beautiful Sickness doesn't sound like
Hatebreed or
Throwdown -- and anyone who appreciates the industrialized cyber-metal of
Ministry,
White Zombie,
Godflesh, or
Powerman 5000 should have some appreciation of this CD's metallic use of electronics (although
Project: Failing Flesh has a lot more fast tempos than those bands). Of course, someone who reads five different reviews of this release might find five slightly different takes on what makes the band tick -- and that speaks well of Forrest and Gutierrez because when a band is able to inspire a variety of different comparisons, it indicates that they're onto something creatively.
A Beautiful Sickness isn't quite as consistent as it could have been, but overall, it's a memorable effort that paints an attractive picture of the risk-taking band. ~ Alex Henderson