Review by Sonny for Rumpelstiltskin Grinder - Buried in the Front Yard... (2005)

Buried in the Front Yard... is the debut album from Philadelphia's Rumpelstiltskin Grinder and it is an album of quite typical 2000's thrash with a death metal flavour. The production has a density and clarity that was never afforded to classic-era thrash metal and is a significant pointer to how metal recording techniques had advanced over the previous couple of decades. Unfortunately, I got very little out of this to be honest. Yes, the riffs have a deathly weight to them, but are decidedly unremarkable for the most part and fail to linger in the memory beyond the final bar of each track. The band's aesthetic seems to be quite humourous with the comic monicker, the cartoonish cover art (which is reminiscent of Acid Witch's cartoon horror covers) and the droll track titles, such as Grab a Shovel (We've Got Bodies to Bury), Stealing E.T. and Ode to Tanks. This would lead you to expect some goofiness in the vein of Municipal Waste or Gama Bomb, but they don't commit to it and the humour doesn't come through much at all. In fact, I would say they sound too intense for humour, coming on more like Pantera than Municipal Waste, especially on the vocals, which sound like an attempt to channel Anselmo or Rob Flynn.

To be honest, I'm not interested enough to say much more about it. It truly isn't an awful album, but it does absolutely zip for me.