EP Review: Kardroz - Severe Dysfunction
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
“Severe Dysfunction” started off with a red flag that could be seen from Phobos, and that was that it reminded me of Six Feet Under. Listen to the agonisingly typical groove of that opening track and tell me you can’t hear Barnes’ laryngitic wheeze over it’s agonisingly simplistic groove riffs. It’s not that everything has to be Spawn of Possession or some other such million strong interlocking tapestry of complexities, keeping it simple can pay dividends, but I find myself asking what there is that Kardroz are bringing to the table that no one else is and sadly I wind up empty handed each time I pose the question. It buries you in tired riffs built of the same open string, first, third and forth frets that you’ve all heard a million times. It’s mundane and only unpredictable insofar as it consistently betrays your attempts to expect more from it, committing the worst of sins by making extreme metal quotidian and uninteresting, less a live fire exercise and more a neutered series of blank rounds.
The strongest moments come when Kardroz leverage their black metal elements; so much so that I rather wish they would rescind their death or grind facets and focus more on this particular feature of their sound. “Deformation” is the track of distinction here – the way the underlying chord progression beneath a corrosive blackened lead evolves between 0.43 to 1.20 demonstrates the sort of songwriting intuition that could’ve elevated the rest of the release, but there isn’t enough of it on display here to hold interest overall. The band draw inspiration from diverse sources, with “Rhypophagy” more reminiscent of the moribund melodicism of God Dethroned, but always at such a basic level that the impression is more of mere pastiche than anything else. “Spontaneous Combustion” thunders into a crushing breakdown towards the end, but when hardcore influence is so ubiquitous within death metal these days in bands from Maul to 200 Stab Wounds it’s hard to be too blown away by Kardroz’ own shot at the style.
Overall there’s sadly not a great deal here that I could recommend, but in the interests of fairness lets give it a try. Production-wise I think it’s an inch off from being an IED, the rotund lower end and fuzzy distortion capable of liquefying the marrow within their bone sheaths, and the final riff of “Incarnation” drops into an agreeably tasty swing, but the sum totality of it is just so boilerplate and uninspired that it defies my attempts to engage with it. It feels as though Kardroz are cycling through disparate frames of reference within extreme metal from song to song, trying their hand at a shard here and a snippet there, whilst excelling at precisely none of them, with the final result being a passable collection of homages to better outfits that never coheres into a unified identity of it’s own. Taken individually, the songs are o.k-ish, but welded together the experience feels as though it lacks focus and conviction, and the release is poorer for it.
If Kardroz could medicate themselves enough to tone down this somewhat skittish approach and wrap all these differing facets into singular compositions, or even just ditch certain aspects of their sound and focus in on one or two, then they’ve probably got the potential to pen something truly disgusting. But as is, “Severe Dysfunction” is too basic, too unfocused, and too underdeveloped to demand your attention or coin. There will be – really there has to be given the sheer quantity of music out there – something more deserving of your time than this EP is. So while I wish Kardroz all the best in their future endeavours, for now all I can do is reluctantly advise you to pass on this and maybe check out whatever they do next under the optimistic assumption that they’ll grow as songwriters and musicians going forward.
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