"Welcome To Oblivion" by How To Destroy Angels

Sometimes it is time to take a chance. Picking out music recently and this showed up. "Welcome To Oblivion" by How To Destroy Angels.

Destroying Angels?! How inanely brutal must this record be? Even Morbid Angel and Slayer didn't talk about killing angels...maybe Cannibal Corpse.

It actually turns out that this album is not very brutal. In fact it's not even remotely brutal. It's not heavy and it's electronic music. Well, being a good sport, it was still given a go.

It would turn out that this is a side project of Trent Reznor's. Well, as NIN has always been like nails on a chalkboard to me, how bad could this be right?

From this point on there will be no more comparisons of How To Destroy Angels and Nine Inch Nails because frankly, there really aren't very many to make aside from the electronic music aspect. The casual listener of NIN (i.e. yours truly) would not be able to pick up on the fact that Reznor is involved in this project as he is not the vocalist.

This album kicks off with what feels like about twenty five minutes of free form bumping with some haunting vocals intermittently riding on top of the commotion.

Sadly, so much of this album doesn't feel like anything other than the backing tracks for a strange rap album. The songs do not feel like completed songs to me. Only on the second half of the record does anything really take shape. This album takes me nowhere and I hear no messages to pass along.

I wanted very badly to listen to this album and say that it was very enjoyable, but it feels less than half finished. At one point while listening to it in the car, I had to turn the stereo off to see if the sound I was hearing was my car squeaking or this record. It was the latter.

This will not be staying in my library.

Year: 2013
Genre: Industrial


Tracklisting:
1) The Wake-Up
2) Keep It Together
3) And The Sky Began To Scream
4) Welcome Oblivion
5) Ice Age
6) On The Wing
7) Too Late, All Gone
8) How Long?
9) Strings and Attractors
10) We Fade Away
11) Recursive Self-Improvement
12) The Loop Closes
13) Hallowed Ground