Ghetto Metal - a review

Stereo Assassin, a noted drum'n'bass artist, recently published to his website and social media a new 4 track EP, named Ghetto Metal. He describes this new EP as “Toxic, violent, caustic, and powerful.” Some people would tend to think such wording is simple marketing hype, that he's trying to make himself sound cooler. Were he Justin Bieber, these people would be right. However, in Stereo Assassin's case, such wording is adequate.

The opening track, Anti Social, opens with a brief voiceover, and then opens up with some rather ominous-sounding synth and bass. The drums come in slightly muted and give you a feel of where the track is going, but it quickly explodes full-force and hits your ears like a cannonball of broken glass laced with necrotoxin. Almost as quickly as it hits it slows back down, but the sounds never stop being ominous, daring you to drop your guard.

After a good five minutes of that, we segue into Boom!, a somewhat easier going track that won't leave you breathless and with bleeding eardrums, but still retains a lot of the danger and suspense that the opening track left us with. However, the track does impressively change its pace and tone in about the last fifty seconds; it is no mean feat to do that in any song of any genre, and that he does it so well here is a testament to his skill.

The third track, Solitary Funk, drops some of the suspense of the last two tracks for some solid drum'n'bass, heavy and thick. The track never loses your interest, despite being the longest on the EP at five minutes, thirty seconds in length. A few ups and downs, a few changes in pace, this remains a steady track for the most part and it's a hell of a lot of fun to listen to.

He ends this EP with a remix of a song, Pyretic, from a band called Fear the Dawn. Both are good songs, though the remix is most definitely more aggressive and faster paced. In fact, all attempt at sounding ominous and sinister and dangerous is replaced by guitars, screaming vocals, and a lot of attack, similar to the level what befell Omaha beach.

In a nice touch, all 4 tracks on this EP flow together very nicely; one gets more enjoyment listening the whole EP straight through than by just listening to the tracks by themselves. This is a somewhat rare trend in mainstream music but seems to be more common amongst indie artists and is very welcome here, giving the whole album a slightly more organic feel, like you were actually listening to him play live. That said, this is not rave or club music, not by a longshot. If you're listening to this, you probably like more aggressive music to begin with (I mostly listen to metal, myself; I listen to anything I think is good and catches but I tend towards metal genres). To an extent, his Pyretic remix actually reminds me some of Klayton's (of Celldweller fame) older projects such as AP2 and Circle of Dust. And no, that's not a bad thing at all.

In the end, I would highly recommend any good fan of the D'n'B, Industrial, and Metal genres give it look here http://soundcloud.com/stereoassassin/sets/ghetto-metal-1 - I greatly enjoy listening to it, and i'm really looking forward to Stereo Assassin's next release. One final recommendation - it sounds great coming through your headphones, but if you get a chance, run it through a sound system with at least one subwoofer and 300 watts of audio power. It will NOT disappoint.