Mark Morton - Anesthetic

Over the years I have learned to become wary of “star-studded”, guest-feature-focused albums coming out of metal. It’s not because guest features don’t work as well in metal as they do in, say hip hop (Devin Townsend’s Deconstruction is living proof of it being possible), but because these kinds of albums rarely seems to have any kind of cohesive vision and because the guests involved hardly ever bring their A-game to projects like these, if ever outside their main project(s).

Spearheaded by Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton, Anesthetic is the latest of these big-time conglomerations of various artists within hard rock and heavy metal, and Jesus Christ it is fucking terrible.

I was actually kind of intrigued when I heard Mark Morton of all people had a solo album coming out. The dude’s not really the most public figure in his band, and he’s not really called upon too much outside Lamb of God as far as I know. But when I looked at the track list and saw the nutrition facts-length list of guest stars, I got a little bit nervous, and then when I saw it was being released under Spinefarm (one of the most trash-ass labels of late) I knew it wasn’t going to be good. And God, sometimes it sucks being right.

For starters, this album has absolutely no identity, as these kinds of projects tend to, which the constant switching from guest singer to guest singer doesn’t help, but for as much as Mark Morton often resorts to his usual Lamb of God blueprints to fill the voids of a lot of songs, nothing about this album gave me the sense that I was getting a glimpse into Morton’s creative center. Because if he’s not just adding what he knows how to do from Lamb of God, he’s just providing super generic alternative rock/metal guitar work and he’s not present at all really for huge portions of what is apparently his own album. As a lot of Spinefarm releases tend to be, this album is cookie-cutter as fuck, from the lazy, widely palatable alt rock/metal styling to the utterly unimaginative and predictable butt rock structures. And all of those stylistic choices would be fine if the songwriting was actually potent, but there is nothing to remember this album by other than the repeated feelings of confusion at what contrived style Morton and his main collaborators like Josh Wilbur are trying from track to track.

The album starts off with the single that perhaps gained it the most preemptive traction due to its featuring of a posthumous performance from Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington. It’s like the equivalent of listening to oil and water, with Chester sounding like he was recording vocals for an older Linkin Park track, and Morton playing like he’s warming up for a Lamb of God show, in a radio alt metal format. The following song with Papa Roach’s Jacoby Shaddix is essentially the same ultra played-out, formulaic butt rock bullshit with a little hint of Morton’s playing style with Lamb of God coming through.

Aside from those two songs, “Save Defiance” with Altar Bridge’s Myles Kennedy and “Back from the Dead” with Buckcherry frontman Josh Todd simply pad the album with another eight and a half minutes of by-the-numbers radio metal time-wasting. But it’s the album’s second to last track, on which Mark Morton himself apparently takes the mic, where the producer’s overlooming touch is really highlighted. Morton’s voice is layered and doctored as hell, just for the sake of letting him sing on his own album, probably for the gimmick of it, but of course not without the label making sure it was marketable in the same way the rest ofnthe songs on here try to be. The album also gets into some weird genre dabbling/appropriation that shows how clearly poorly versed Morton and producer Josh Wilbur are in them. The songs “Axis and "Blur” go for this cliché southern metal vibe that Mark Lanegan and Mark Morales clearly aren’t feeling enough to put and aren’t excited about performing for.

The two heavier songs on here are rather revealing of where Morton’s compositional strengths really lie. The song “The Never” with Chuck Billy is practically just a modern Testament song with none of the flashiness of the band’s instrumental virtuosity. As basic as it is, it feels far more natural than pretty much everything surrounding it, and the rest of the ham-fisted album doesn’t feel natural at all until a few moments on the closing song with Alissa White-Gluz from Arch Enemy and Morton’s longtime bandmate, Randy Blythe.

When Mark and Randy team up on the closing track’s verses, a little bit of the vibrance they channel through Lamb of God comes through that highlights how out of his element Mark is on most of the rest of the album. Alissa White-Gluz is indeed a competent enough death metal vocalist, but performing on the track with Randy Blythe (granted one of the best and most signature in his field), she arguably doesn’t hold her own well at all and it kind of shows how exaggerated her talent is in a lot of circles. Her clean vocals are also kind of a distraction when they show up and they break up the rhythm the song tries to develop.

Despite ending on its strongest foot, this album left nothing but a disgusting aftertaste in my mouth. I could at least laugh at how ridiculous Papa Roach’s new album was earlier this year, but this, there’s nothing funny about this. This is just a less than half-assed look-who’s-here fest from everyone involved, and if Mark Morton himself did pour the effort he claims he did into this album, it clearly got snuffed out by the label’s guide to wide audience pandering. Or who knows, maybe this really is a good representation of Morton’s creative mind; if it is, I’m glad it’s consistently overridden by the rest of his bandmates in his main project, which I might not even be able to look at quite the same because of how truly, abysmally unbearable this album is. I’m being hyperbolic with that of course, but I could not exaggerate how much I absolutely hated nearly every minute of sitting through this album. I would rather sit through Otep’s last album, I would rather sit through the fucking Prophets of Rage album, I would even rather sit through the last Ministry album. Fuck it, I’d rather sit through all of them together, and then a Puddle of Mudd album. At least that’d be an entertaining shitshow. This shitshow, on the other hand, didn’t even need to happen, and no one participating really seemed to care much about how it happened or if it did at all. If this thing fell through at some point after everyone submitted their parts, I don’t think anyone would have been heartbroken by it. This is on par with, if not even worse than, Bullet for My Valentine’s sellout cowardice last year (though Spinefarm as well incidentally) and perhaps even Black Veil Brides’ atrocity from last year too. And this wasn’t even me getting morbidly curious either, this had the ingredients to not be such rancid public bathroom trash. This utter shambles and mismanagement of this kind of uninvested, big bill collaboration didn’t need to happen to what has been anticipated to be such a hype year for metal, and this is undoubtedly the worst thing I have heard all year.

The Camel (minus the fun)/10