Swwwwoooooooosh here comes another suuuuuppeeeer grooouuuuuppp!!!! Oh, great, yeah, we know what that means, and in the case of Barren Earth it couldn't be more true. "Super" groups consist of members of generally well-known or successful acts in a certain genre, and all the more typically they end up sounding like the sidekick. You know, like the sidekick lounge in the Tick, think that, but with more sidekicks. Alright, we'll avoid the geek analogies and lay it out with something more akin to Sparrowspeak. Barren Earth is just that, dead and dried up, incapable of taking on water, or if it does it ends up a pile of black, stinking mud instead of a flourishing wetland. These guys are more painfully barren than a virgin from Victoria's Secret catalog without a uterus. You look at it and think "dizamn I wants to tap that", but when you get into its actual purpose in life, no offense ladies but as intended by the great natural world, there's just nothing there. Curse of the Red River doesn't fail entirely, but it's too damn yaaaawn to waste your time with. Case in point, this reviewer listened to it about six months ago and just now had the energy to write all of this babble.
You'll find all the please-send-our-site-another-promo-CD hype online. "They could become famous", "...brimming with results", "...marvelous melodious guitar solos", and other such snippets sound like the taken-out-of-context mindspeak you've read on the latest Mission: Impossible movie poster. Will you mind watching it? Probably not. Will you watch it again? Probably not. And that's the issue here. Sure, you've likely read it before on another site and you probably don't want to read it again. The guitarwork is fluid, the prog-metal edge is present, the clean singing gives good contrast, why continue along these lines? The main reason to avoid this rationale is simple, this shit is straight-up average, nothing more. Yeah, we get it, the production is stellar and there are members of Amorphis and Moonsorrow or some shit in it. We really don't care, and neither should you. You shouldn't have to approach a release like this with the "check out who's in it" attitude. That doesn't fly anymore and can't think of a time when it ever did. If you have to focus on that in the promotion while throwing out the usual "X is good" formulaic licks, then you don't have an honest review. Curse of the Red River is just a big pile of lack, and it couldn't possibly lack anymore.
See, the problem here is that, aside from what you may read or might have read, Barren Earth wear their name with pride. This means, they play completely without substance. There's barely a minute of material on this entire album you're going to remember. The chording and riffs are played splendidly, but they never tug on your heartstrings, their only real function is to let you know your ears are still working. The singing goes from roaring ala Incantation or any other death metal band to rather bland, though articulate, heavenly singing from a fallen angel who couldn't even get into hell. And there's a little too much back and forth between genres going on here without any real consistency. You're going to hear guitar reees akin to brutal death metal and even some notes that sound like someone's fit to rip off Melechesh. That's really all there is to it, Curse of the Red River is more like the Curse of the Metal Community. These guys have all the ingredients to make the cake, but in the end they're not sure what comes first, the icing or the batter. And by the time they do both are stale, bland, and sugar free. For whatever these shitty analogies are worth, don't waste your time.
Official Site
Written by Arkus
