Sometimes, reviewing cd's is a harder task than I ever thought it could be. Because of my ethic of standards when it comes to reviewing a cd I am forced to sit through some really atrocious music. I do this though because I tell myself, “Maybe after the third or fourth time through something redeemable will surface.” Well in this case, after the fifth spin of this demo by Eternal Combustion I’m sitting here wondering if I should be laughing hysterically or if I should be in a state of catatonia like I am right now. I just want to curl up into a ball in the corner and cry until I pass out from dehydration because I wasn’t aware that there could be music as god awful as this. I don’t even know where to begin on this review, I’m being assaulted by just plain unadulterated badness at every angle, it’s overwhelming. Maybe it’s the fact that these guys are a wannabe Partridge Family of metal, they have a thirteen year old kid as the singer and his mom and dad and uncle in the band as various abusers of instruments and then his sister as a light technician. Maybe it's the fact that I’ve had demos sent by bands such as Evening Star and Magistral that reek of high quality and skill, and to hear the exact opposite of that is like being thrown into the middle of the blazing noon sun in the Sahara Desert after spending three years in a darkened air conditioned room. I’m not lying when I say that I would rather have had my balls be caught in my truck door and then slammed on then to have heard the sheer life ending awfulness of Eternal Combustion.

Now, I don’t want you to think that I’m tearing apart this band because the singer is only thirteen. I don't want him to go kill himself after reading this but then again they have recorded music and unleashed it on the world and they need to be stopped. I mean, when talking about age and young singers, Andre Matos was fifteen when Viper did Soldiers of Sunrise and Tobias Sammet was fourteen on the early demo tapes of Edguy, so the fact that this band has a young singer is not the reason why I hate them so very, very much. I pick on the lifeless Tipton because he just shouldn’t be singing right now. He sounds so horribly forced it’s hilarious, he either tries to come across as tough by singing through clenched teeth shut and when he does the high notes like on the chorus to Bitter Dreggs it’s so fucking bad I almost crapped my pants laughing. I’m sorry little dude, but I advise you to practice in your room alone, for a few years before surfacing again. If I was the band I wouldn’t be advertising that they have a thirteen year old as their vocalist, I would work more on writing good songs and having a good singer than trying to be a novelty act. As for the songs themselves, imagine a homeless version of Judas Priest mixed with being shot in the leg and you have a good idea of what to expect. The riffs are sludgy, bland, and as edgy as a spork you’d find at KFC. Everything is at a snail’s pace and drags on so bad that this short twelve minute demo seems to last ten hours. There are no dynamics what so ever, no melodies, no nothing! The drummer sounds as if he phoned his performance in and hits as hard as Richard Simmons if he was hopped up on three bottles of Nyquil and just downed a dozen tabs of Valium. Coming back to Titpon, and while it might seem like I’m just picking on him I will offer him advice, singing lessons. I know he's a fan of metal at least, and you know what? That's all good and great and he might someday along the lines become a pretty good singer but to me this smells of sheer novelty. Like I said, I think he should take lessons and practice alot more before recording again. A great vocalist, like say Lance King or Tom Englund, you can almost see them and the precise way that they hit their notes. You can hit them out in the air with your hand from low to mid to high, for example on the clip we had of Sleepy Hollow, in the first verse, you can just feel the impact of the line, “I will not leave it, I will not accept this…”. On Evergrey’s In the Wake of the Weary, you can hear Tom’s voice drip with emotion in the way he delivers the lines, “Your angels are calling, their aim is rewarding…”. Here, on songs such as the excitingly titled Metal Detector and Eternal Combustion we have vocals that instead of sounding emotional or precise in notes and delivery, are instead a blur of warbling up and down in some fashion that makes my version of The Pooper sound like I’m the second coming of Bruce Dickinson. The ejaculatory high notes are thrown out here and there with no sense of belonging, they are just randomly placed and every time one happens I cringe and shudder. Actually, this describes what I do when I hear anything by this band now, I cringe and shudder and wish I had never heard of these guys.

Me and my friend have a two man grindcore project going on. We are intentionally making the music as horrible and sloppy and as violent as possible but yet we still don’t suck as bad as Eternal Combustion and they’re actually trying to be a good band. That right there should say it all. Avoid at all costs and boo this band if you are unfortunate enough to live in Seattle and they open up for a group such as Helloween or Nevermore.