I figured that the time would be right to review this 2003 release, due to the fact that Slayer’s new release is probably just around the corner, and Kerry King has often said that Chimaira is now one of his favorite bands, and that they ‘remind him of us when we were starting up.’ To be honest, I can’t remember when Slayer wrote lyrics like:

I fall/ I fall face down at the sight of yourself /No one to pick me up/ Look what our lives have become

And that's why hell /Is the impossibility of reason

From The Impossibility of Reason, title track.

I mean, just LOOK at those for twelve seconds, and allow it to sink into your brain, sloooowwwllyy. Kerry King thinks the guys who have lyrics like these on their records kick ass. Kerry King writes most of Slayers’ material (he was given writing credits for ALL BUT ONE SONG on God Hates Us All, and wrote seven of them entirely by himself). Kerry King has lost his fucking mind. Not only that, but the new Slayer album will be shit, just like God Hates Us All was (high rating on this site nonwithstanding, that was a terrible album).

But this review isn’t entirely about Slayer, it’s mostly about Chimaira. I saw the release staring up at me appealingly, marked down a few bucks in my local FYE. I remembered that some guy I used to hang out with had said that they were decent. So I thought, why the hell not, and picked it up.

To be honest, I would rather have bought a bunch of rotten kumquats pressed into CD form than this piece of trash. The song titles should have warned me (Down Again? Power Trip? Cleansation? Is that even a fucking word?).

If I had to describe Chimaira’s sound in one word, it would be ‘retread.’ They went to the Breaking Benjamin school of composition, IE: ‘Take a bunch of your favorite artists and rip a little bit off of each one’… but do it without any of the approach to songwriting that would be needed to make such compositions engaging in the first place.

The riffs? Stolen straight off of The More Things Change… and Far Beyond Driven. The harsh vocals? Think Jamey Jasta with no charisma, combined with a healthy dose of David Draiman. The clean vocals? Burton C. Bell mixed with Captain Beefheart. The drumming? Surprisingly excellent, seeing as the drummer used to be in Dying Fetus, and as a result, is far too good to be in this pitiful band.

The songs generally all sound the same, with the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-please-kill-me-now vibe overpowering everything. The one cool structure is in Cleansation, and that’s only because they give the drummer a chance to show off a bit before he’s overpowered by those fucking guitars that just play the same damn riffs over and over and again and again, and then start playing those riffs over again that they just recently played, again.

Implements of Destruction is the only decent song on this, but it’s very, very, very long, somewhat incoherent, and generally directionless. You get the idea that they were heading for some sort of ‘Industrial groove-thrash Dream Theater’ vibe, but they kinda miss that mark. Got some good riffs that don’t sound copied ad verbatim from (insert random 90’s groove band here), and a few industrial sound effects ripped off from such reputable and well-respected artists as Static-X and Mushroomhead.

I recommend that absolutely no-one purchase this CD, and that if you see someone about to buy it, overpower them and call my handy Chimaira Fan Re-Education Hot Line, at 555-MARKHUNTERSHOULDBESHOT, where they will be subjected to shock therapy and apochimaira, so as to get them off the self-destructive habit that may very well lead them back into mallcore.