Since their formation in 2008, Guilty As Sin has been keeping busy by banging out disc after disc. After releasing three CDs in consecutive years, the band decided to keep the tradition alive and introduce their latest full-length album, Psychotronic.
The brief, first listing, “Start Transmission,” gets the album off in an interesting way. It has a sci-fi feeling to it as the synthesizers are trying to make out some words, though they’re almost impossible to hear. The disc then shifts gears to metal with “Destroyed Reptoid 1.0” and “Frothing At The Cunt.” They both feature Zak Ovoian screaming while Dan McAdam rocks the electric guitar and Ryan Dilberian backs him up with heavy basslines. The instrumentals are definitely pleasing on these two tracks but they’re each less than two minutes long.
One of the few highlights from the album, “Addicted To Cyanide” is a startling metal tune. Just less than seven minutes in length, this excellent instrumental contains flawless riffs from McAdam. But then something strange happens on the next track, “Gobekli Tepe.” It starts out in impressive fashion with more stellar guitars but somewhere out of left field, “Gobekli Tepe” turns into a strange Middle Eastern tune. Thankfully, “When Machines Eat Flesh” gets much harder as Ovoian shows his serious drum chops. Extremely trippy is the closing track, “Psychotronic,” where there is some awkward screeching, the sound of a CD skipping and inaudible lyrics.
This is a very interesting album to say the least. When the trio is playing metal, the music is not that bad, but when they mix in synthesizers, trumpets and hand drums, it was a bit of a disappointment. It would also be exciting to see what they could do with a full-time vocalist.
In A Word: Peculiar
