The ninth album of Hungarian Ektomorf has been getting many good reviews and I honestly don’t understand why. True, I appreciate simple things, but there’s a difference between “simples” and “plain”. Then there’s the “beating a dead horse” issue – “Retribution” almost sounds like a concept album, not turning around a story or a theme but a group of the same chords (though given the number of “fucks”, “hates” and so-on, verbal abuse could almost be the concept of the album).

And as if it wasn’t enough the internal repeatability, we face the recycling of foreign sounds. For the tribal rhythms, the clearest is Sepultura (compare the guitars in “Ten Plagues” with the ones in “Ratamahatta”, for instance), but we also recognize the presence of Soulfly (I belive Zoltán Farkas is a big Max Cavalera fan), Machine Head, Slayer (and I obviously don’t mean the Verbal Abuse “I Hate You” cover, which Slayer also recorded) and even Fear Factory (when listening “face your fear” in the song with the same title, my memory kept showing me Burton C. Bell singing “I am rape, I am hate” in “Replica”).

The kind of modern catchy melody in the chorus of “Numb And Sick” may be something for them to explore in the future – not exactly original, with all those melo-metalcore bands out there nowadays, but still it breaks some of the monotony. The clean parts in “Lost And Destroyed” are also refreshing, but not for long since the aggressive parts return to the same-old I’ve complained about before. In the case of “Save Me”, the melody is heavy and dark, which isn’t exactly bad, except for the fact that it’s become a cliché among thrash metal bands.

“Collapsed Bridge” is a nice surprise in the end, but it can’t be seen as more than an extra. Saying that Ektomorf should write more songs like that – acoustic – would be denying their nature.

No matter how weak the creativity, the performance is good and the production has quality. And if the Sepultura fans see here reincarnation instead of cloning, “Retribution” might have some success. Personally, I’m not convinced at all.

Label: AFM Records

Producer: Tue Madsen

Track list:

1. You Can’t Control Me
2. Ten Plagues
3. Face Your Fear
4. Escape
5. Who The Fuck Are You
6. Numb And Sick
7. Lost And Destroyed
8. Souls Of Fire
9. I Hate You [Verbal Abuse cover]
10. Watch Me
11. Mass Ignorance
12. Save Me
13. Whisper
14. Collapsed Bridge

www.ektomorf.com