Comparative Anatomy — Mammalia

I don't know what musical style Comparative Anatomy are calling themselves.  I read the phrase "experimental drum and bass" somewhere, and there's definitely some kind of pervasive wannabe  grindcore thing going on here, but really this album "Mammalia" is first and foremast a lazy collection of shallow and unlistenable novelty gags.  Basically, they play simplistic fist-in-the-air groove metal patterns with a distorted bass (which sounds okay but very bland - and exactly the same in every song!), add in some ham fisted distorted kick drum and snare sounds and repetitious stock recordings of animals and call it done.

It genuinely angers me that this record is getting the distinction of receiving reviews from several notable experimental music sites.  Alternately placing one of two animal samples on each accented beat of a standard rock riff will not make your band 'experimental'.  For the band to suggest that their clumsy sampling has somehow successfully replaced a vocalist exhibits a worrying degree of pretention, and shows how much they must think they can get by on the 'hilarity' of using animal noises.  What's more, they further ruin any unpredictability their music may have had by naming each track after the sort of animal they've sampled for it.  They sample a single animal per song and, as I mentioned earlier, alternate between two or three different samples of that animal for the duration of the song.  There's occasional evidence of attempts to use them for musical effect, but any musical idea presented is quickly looped to death, reminding the listener again of the incredible laziness which permeates every aspect of this recording.

There is nothing about the riffs or rhythms on this album that could not be more skillfully conceived and played by any reasonably competent high school age metal or rock band in your area.  Moreover, the amateurish charm such groups occasionally exhibit is absent from this group due to the horrendous digital chopping, looping and editing all through the album.  There is no sense of the music being 'performance'; it sounds as if every riff was recorded separately.  The riffs themselves sound like they came from the rock section of a loop library.

Songs generally begin with a couple samples before a simplified version of a riff plays a couple times, followed by the real thing.  After a riff ends, we're either treated to some kind of supposedly humorous sample followed by another riff, usually with slightly different pacing.  After this ends, there's usually some more samples of animals, followed by a longer, again supposedly humorous, dialogue sample to close the song (for example, in "My Voice Is Horses" it's "A horse is a horse, of course, of course").  Occasionally the bass is played with clean tone, but in these cases the riffing style does not change.  It is as if the bassist himself does notice the change in tone.  None of the riffs have enough melodic content that they could be considered related in any way.  The intros of many tracks appear to be attempted build ups, but have all the finesse of a beginning musicians first arrangement of loops in Garage Band (it wouldn't surprise me to hear this whole was made in Garage Band, actually).  I really don't know why they bothered to make 10 whole pieces with this same formula.

In conclusion, this is the sort of album I'd find hard to sit through through even if it was recorded by my best friend.  The band seems to spend all their time trying to be funny, and the "randomness" of their jokes is neither new nor truly random.  The evident lack of effort and feeling put into this album is something I find inexcusable.  One of the worst albums I've heard all year