With a sound that combines a myriad of metallic styles, it's been quite difficult to link
Soilent Green to one specific subgenre -- one minute they're riffing and roaring away à la
Pantera, the next they're offering up death metal tempos. So despite their sonic melting pot, it's widely agreed that the group has been a champion of extreme metal for some time, as evidenced by any of their brutal releases for Relapse. On their fifth release overall, 2005's
Confrontation, the group are still out to slay the competition, and from front to back, few could keep pace with
Soilent Green. But whereas two of the group's top influences,
Slayer and the aforementioned
Pantera, break things up musically from time to time,
Soilent Green keep things cranked up to ten (for the most part). As a result, if you're not a die-hard fan of extreme metal, songs start blending into each other very quickly. A few exceptions turn out to be the tracks "Liquor and Cigarettes" and "Paper Cut," which both start off (gasp) in a mellow mode before, of course, collapsing into more over the top rage. ~ Greg Prato