Review by ZeroSymbolic7188 for Gorguts - Colored Sands (2013)

Disclaimer; I originally reviewed several of these modern death metal albums in a row, and was fatigued when I got here. My original review was brief and agitated; 

"As I work through this list I am really running out of fun ways to say "great musicianship, horrible music", but here we are again."

However, a couple esteemed users here, including Ben (site founder along side Dan if you didn't know) felt that such a brief and dismissive comment was disrespectful given the reputation of this album and band. Therefore I dedicate this review to Ben, and I do so with 100% pure love for my brother in heavy metal, but also with 100% pure hate for this album. I love you so much that this will be my most in depth review of an album so far, and probably for a while. If this reads as odd or as passive aggressive, it is not meant to-the long story short is that I have no family, they were all extremely disfunctional or have died. Heavy Metal is my family, not in a ManOwaR cheese sense, but in a very real sense to me, even if we disagree about things like this album and I am attempting sincerity.

Without further or do. My extended review of Gorguts-Colored Sands.

BOX ART: We have a vaguely cloaked figure, or maybe two of them the top pair is holding beads and the hands are in a prayer position. The bottom set of hands appears to be bound by some dainty rope. This figure is posed atop a pyramid, or maybe a village in the shape of a pyramid-there is not enough detail to be for certain, and yet to me it looks like things I've seen associated with the Aztecs. Then of course there is a bunch of sand, but it's definitely not colored. The color pallette here is black, white, grey, and piss. Maybe it's a piss filter over a black white and gray drawing. The band name sits proudly in the upper left hand corner in band logo font, yet the album title is spread across the bottom in some of the most generic font man kind has ever seen.  
Now my user name is ZeroSymbolic, and in addition to that being a reference to Chuck Schuldiner's Death, it is also a bit of an in joke I have with myself. The gag is that at a glance it appears to be some real deep shit "Zero Symbolic what does that mean?" Well, it doesn't mean jack shit-there is Zero, meaning none, Symbolism, meaning greater meaning-literally says "there is no greater meaning".
That's what this album cover is to me- a whole lot of shit that is supposed to make you think because it has vague religious connotations, but it doesn't actually say anything about religion. Is this figure a victim? A devotee of some ancient cult? Who knows? Who gives a fuck? I don't. If it does have some deep radical meaning that I am missing, that might be an indicator of why I don't gravitate to this sort of thing. I'm in death metal to bang my head to brutal drumming, blazing fast riffs, and listen to some dude gargle on about zombies and eating flesh, and zombies that eat flesh, and zombies that eat zombies. I'm not going to church here-so don't preach to me. I'm not going to school either-so don't try to educate me. 

BACKGROUND: I hop over to the wikipedia page now and get some background. Main takeaways are as follows.
*Canadian Technical Death Metal: It's gonna be a bunch of obnoxious wanking with no connectivity. 
*5th full length album, but only the 2nd studio album there is about a decade between this and the first: That's kinda fucky aint it?
*New Guitarist, New Bassist, New Drummer. Drummer leaves after this album: Oh yay an inconsistent rhythym section. This is what every bassist looks forward to hearing. BTW notice there are 4 people in this band. 3 are new.
*Band members left previous bands because they were "uncomfortable with the improvisational elements in that band's music."-They can't Improvise. 
*Everybody is technically impressive and classically trained. They enjoy "working out very specific ideas in micro-detail."- They like to jack each other off, in a musical sense I mean.
*Concepts: No Slayer beats, no fast picking riffs. We are "creating a new musical language."-I am a fan of Motorhead, Venom, and Kiss. Fuck off with this.
*Something something Tibetian sand symbol that is ritualistically destoyed... somehting something Tibetian shooting tragedy... something something.... I can't be assed.
*Let's throw an Orchestral piece in the middle for the fuck of it.-Could we possibly be more pretentious with this? That's what Death metal needs, an orchestral interlude. I was  just listening to "Eaten back to Life" and thinking to myself "This is pretty good, but can I get a fucking string ensemble in here?"

...
And after all that, it sounds exactly the way I thought it would. It's over an hour of pretentious musicians masturbating their instruments in the name of high art, because they just can't write a fucking song with a hook. 30minutes of boring shit, an orchestrial piece that doesn't belong, and another 30 minutes of boring shit. 

I don't know how many times I've been forced to listen to this trash, and other garbage that sounds just like it, but I do know that I hate it more each and every time. This fake-deep, high art,  technical arms-race, unlistenable crap, because "we are the educated metalheads, we are classically trained serious musicians, not those dumb fucking beer guzzling caveman metalheads."

Let's get this straight, Black Sabbath was four working class men who set out to write music for the working class, and to scare people, somewhere along the line some of us lost the plot and thought heavy metal was about how complicated the music could be, how fast you could play it, and how much you could impress the masses. For me it isn't about any of those things. It's about being geniune to yourself. If you are hanging your musical hat on concepts like "improvisation makes me uncomfortable, and I must micro-compose the fine details of my music." I think it speaks to not being comfortable in your own skin. 

I do not  know the men in Gorguts, they may be fantastic lads, but this breed of high art heavy metal always carries a smug air about it that rubs me the wrong way. Luc Lemay refers to the music as "Intellectual-Death Metal". It's very difficult for me to shake the idea that he's implying other kind of Death-Metal, or metal in general is not intellectual. 

They probably don't like my shit either, and you know what? That's OK, because there is room for all of us under the metal umbrella. I hope they sell a billion albums, and I hope I don't have to listen to any of them.

Fun fact: I didn't think I gave a fuck about this album. My wife informs that I gave about 20 here. THE MORE YOU KNOW.