A two-piece band and programmed drums. Often this is the perfect recipe for a catastrophe, but Roadside Burial shows that there are no rules without exceptions. Not that the duo attempt to do things differently than so many other, but thanks to a compact sound and a good job on programming the drums the Aussies have created a violent slap of straight forward death metal that is vigorous enough to be interesting. The music is tight and brutally played which of course just makes it even better, and spiced with the obligatory usage of samples the result is approved.
Exhibit A is a four-piece who play grindcore. The songs are as expected mostly ultra short outbursts of concentrated brutality. Like so many other bands Exhibit A throws in tons of weird and amusing samples. The samples do of course contribute to the diversity, but there's nothing ingenious in what the band create. The 41 songs are quite entertaining, but overall they are not better or worse than so much else. On the whole this effort is a little above the mediocre. It's not a work of genius, but it definitely could have been a lot worse than it is.
