Thy Art Is Murder - Human Target

I can’t remember if Thy Art Is Murder are one of those bands that have gotten upset at being labeled a “deathcore band” like The Acacia Strain have. But if so, I can kind of see where they would be coming from, because their drip of hardcore elements into their brand of modern death metal isn’t really any more than Lamb of God’s into their brand of groove metal, and Lamb of God are only rarely associated with metalcore. But the band do still use these elements in ways that are often just like those used by “deathcore bands”. So on one hand, their music isn’t really bona fide deathcore like The Cleansing or This Is Exile, but it likes to dabble in it, which they seem more open to doing on this album than their last, and for the better.

When I reviewed their fourth album, Dear Desolation, in 2017, I was largely underwhelmed by the rather typical and one-dimensional brand of death metal the band were trying to dress up with the occasional obvious cues taken from Behemoth’s 2015 album, The Satanist. And while this album is a step up in terms of better and more authentic writing, there’s still the occasional Nergal impersonation (with certain rolled “r” pronunciations) from vocalist CJ McMahon on songs like “Eye for an Eye”, the opoid addiction-themed “Chemical Christ” and “Eternal Suffering”. The industrialized human extinction elegy of “Eye for an Eye” is probably the song most rife with Behemoth influence on the album with its theatrically spiritual dissonant-guitar-led intro verse leading into some death metal more blackened than what Thy Art Is Murder tend to go for. But for as one-note as Thy Art Is Murder tend to be with the tempered injection of hardcore into basic shouty modern death metal, I have at least appreciated the band’s ability to occasionally use their platform to address various social or political issues. And Human Target does come with a refreshing offering of just that.

The song “Death Squad Anthem” highlights the obsolescence of the assumption of peaceful law enforcement by police forces with poor track records with respect to the application of their violence, while “New Gods” seemingly likens the manipulation by chief fascist authoritarians to religious puppeteering. On that topic, the not-so-subtle song “Make America Hate Again” finds the band fed up with the deception of bad-faith fascist political strategy and propaganda, morphing and then turning the infamous campaign slogan back against its perpetrators, urging the people in the regime’s crosshairs to make something of their anger and reciprocate the hate. Like the title, the song’s message unfortunately comes across too brutish and heavy-handed; while the intention is clearly to rouse the oppressed from their submission, the song’s calls for chaos aren’t supplemented well enough to make it meaningful and instead just come across as hungry, but frustrated and short-cutted.

The next song, “Eternal Suffering”, fortunately, takes a much more nuanced approach to the depressing defeatism in the face of the gargantuan task of reversing the catastrophic effects of manmade climate change, with the lines “Was it too late or was it not enough? / Did we fail or did we just give up?” capturing succinctly the despair of the approach to the problem the more time passes.

Outside the realm of politics, the song “Atonement” uses much of death metal’s typical dark religious imagery to illustrate the detrimental effects of a negative on one’s mental health. Instrumentally probably my favorite song on the album for its combination of punchy low-register guitar groove and relentlessly death metal battery, as well as the shifts from traditional brutal death metal to faster tech-y sections to deathcore breakdowns, the song “Voyeurs into Death” likens the subjugation of mistreated refugees to the subjugation of citizens being trained to accept such violence as normal.

Even though the compositional step up on this album is a minor one, and still one that doesn’t much widen the band’s sonic pallet, I can at least appreciate the greater consistency and effectiveness of their approach on this album compared to its predecessor, and I can definitely appreciate the band’s commitment to tackling important issues of the current day.

Crack in the riot shield/10