BY TIMOTHY TARKELLY
REVIEW
Troglodyte, a Kansas City-based band, released its most recent contribution to the death metal scene, “Don’t Go in the Woods.” The album clings to exploring the gory side of the legendary Bigfoot.
The album’s cover portrays a cartoon yeti dragging its newest victim to the forest in B-Movie style. This is a welcoming invitation to anyone who loves cheap horror films, or any metal fans with a decent sense of humor. The gimmick does not last long. The opening song, “No Beast So Fierce,” proves to be a waste of time.
While it isn’t uncommon for an album to have an instrumental introduction, it is nothing special. It sounds like the beginning to a song that is interrupted by a new one.
Drop-A tuned guitars and double bass pedals keep this album in check with death metal purists. Troglodyte does not venture far outside of this framework. It is too easy for death metal bands to get locked into the pattern of “riff, vocal breakdown, riff.”
The first stand-out song is “Red Handed.” Instrumentally, it is the first song that shows the band is making an effort, and the first song to drive the theme home. Toward the end we hear a voice grunting, “Bloody footprints in the snow…” as well as a back-and-forth where one voice describes their fate with another voice saying “red-handed” in a series of yeti-esque ways.
The title track, “Don’t Go In The Woods,” is ridiculous in its meshing of swaying rhythms and guttural vocal tricks. I had to take my headphones off, sit and think about what I had just heard and listen again. This song is incredible, and I wish more of the album was like it.
The most entertaining song is “Oregon Trail.” For anyone that has ever played the ancient computer game, the lyrics are a list of the possible ways that you can die in the game, and at the end they add this possibility: “Bigfoot ate my leg.”
The album ends with the song “352.” It is unremarkable until the final seconds when Bigfoot’s snarl brings the album to a close.
Thematic metal bands are not uncommon. For years, bands like Nile and Burzum have been writing songs about Egyptian and Norse mythology. What separates Troglodyte from the rest is they do not take themselves too seriously.
“Don’t Go in the Woods” is not an album that will live through the ages. However, it is worth the $9 it costs to download it.
BY TIMOTHY TARKELLY
C standard tuning, no drop A. “Bloody foot prints in the snow” is from Crippled Foot Cast not Red Handed. Valent effort tho…