Butcher Babies - Lilith

Since their emergence into metal’s mainstream, much of the metal community has treated Butcher Babies as a petty annoyance, and for the most part I can understand and sympathize. For all the attention they garner, their music is incredibly unoriginal and hardly remarkable, and at the beginning of their career they clearly let their highly sexually provocative theatrics carry them while they posture as intimidatingly as they can. This isn’t to say the two frontwomen can’t sing or even scream, but something about the generic and seemingly passionless performances and compositions the band churns out just always makes listening to them seem somewhat empty.

Their newest album, Lilith, doesn’t do much to change their trajectory, but it carries a few highlights more than any of their past albums have. This album shares a similar condition to Motionless in White’s latest album in that it’s an overall hit or miss mish mash of their influences (fewer hits in Butcher Babies’ case). While Motionless in White on their last album sounded like the bastard child of Bullet for My Valentine and Marilyn Manson, Butcher Babies here sound like the unplanned bastard child of In This Moment and Otep. The lyrics are similarly cheesy on Lilith also, and listening to the whole thing though made me wonder how this first-take-sounding project hit number one on the iTunes metal chart.

For me the hits on this album are three exactly, the title track for its bridge’s vocal performance which reminds me of the featured singer on Dimmu Borgir’s “Gateways”, “Korova” for its soaring vocal melodies during the choruses, and the hypnotic serenade and elevating singing on “Look What We’ve Done”. These aren’t the heaviest moments on the album at all, and that’s because the album’s heavy moments are all super contrived and boring nu metal / metalcore chugs and the same growls sustained for the sake of trying to impress. The album’s weakest moment though has to be the tremendously difficult to stomach pop metal radio bait “Headspin”; that song, especially after the title track’s instillation of hope in me of this being a somewhat enjoyable project, was not easy to get through. The single “POMONA (Shit Happens)” was also another irritating wannabe dance-y party song that I found myself really wanting to turn off.

While they’re not trying to lure anybody in with nipple tape this time, Butcher Babies have come through with another generic album not worthy of the amount of press they’ve been getting, but it’s one that does have its moments of beauty worth picking out. And I hope the band decide to chase those kinds of moments on their next effort.