Extrema's third full album, 2001's
Better Mad Than Dead, arrived a full six years after their second, 1995's overwrought
The Positive Pressure (Of Injustice), and denoted just how far the once highly touted Italian group had fallen from domestic popularity's graces during the intervening years. What's more, it also proved conclusively that the creative extremity suggested by the band's moniker was nothing but a ruse, since they actually seemed more interested in glomming onto whatever heavy metal gimmicks were in vogue at that particular moment, rather than carving an identity of their own. Check that: whatever heavy metal gimmicks were in vogue a few years earlier, since
Extrema also seemed prone to crash any given party just as most of the participants were already heading home with nasty hangovers. In the case of 1993's
Tension at the Seams, the outdated style focused on had been funky thrash metal (latest sell-by date circa 1991); for 1995's aforementioned
Positive Pressure it was thrash and
Pantera-style groove metal (commercial peak circa 1993); and for
Better Mad, it was a little more of the same, plus lot's of nu-metal's clunky, detuned riffs and white-boy rapping, finally topped with electronic quirks borrowed from latter-day
White Zombie circa 1995 -- yeesh! All these traits are profiled across opening gambit "Generation" and extrapolated to
Korn-derived extremis by third track "Another Nite" (which rips off "Got the Life" but at least features a decent hook); but it's all downhill from there, with offerings like "All Around," "Sanity," and "Some Faith" simply diluting the band's
Korn/
Slipknot imitations even further. Another grouping of songs, including "Too Late," "W.A.S.T.E.D.," and "The Brawler" take another route and borrow extensively from the
Biohazard nu-hardcore handbook; and even the psycho-thrash wig-out undertaken by the prophetically titled "Wannabe" cops its spirit from
Sepultura's
Chaos A.D. In sum,
Better Mad Than Dead made listeners question the validity of its title and ushered in another half-decade of silence until
Extrema's next album...or should we say, their next attempt to catch up.