Album Details

• Artist: War From A Harlots Mouth
• Album: Transmetropolitan
• Label: Lifeforce
• Year of Release: 2007
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: solitaryman on 2007-10-10

Hailing from the capital city of Berlin, War From A Harlots Mouth are a band with a considerable amount of buzz swirling around them. Their split with Shotgun Messiah has served as a big tease for this, their debut album, Transmetropolitan. Claiming no genre and no agenda beyond making quality music, the 5-piece nonetheless ends up lumped in with the whole oversaturated metalcore scene. While variations of the breakdown-heavy style are apparent, they rarely stray from the "core" of this sound.

   The songs all have cute titles, obvious odes to other "insert style"-core bands and their silly-penned ways. In obvious contrast, these songs are anything but cute. "How to disconnect from your social surrounding in half an hour", beyond it's pretentious title is a nice opener, utilizing grindcore vocals and guitar tonality to maximum effect within a more metalcore frame. That more or less sums up most of these songs, a sort of spastic combination of Dillinger Escape Plan, Ion Dissonance, Converge, Cattle Decapitation, etc. You get the picture; another band attempting to push the boundaries of insanity. Unfortunately for them, all they end up pushing is the line between redundancy and mediocrity. In the wrong direction.

   What's most wrong with Transmetropolitan is the forcefulness beyond the band's want to be different than everyone else. Whether it's the shady promo release casting an immediate skeptical eye on the whole affair or just simply (and I'm going with this one) a lack of true songwriting ability, you cannot possibly sit through the entire record without being reminded of 1,001 bands you've heard before. Their inspirations are more or less being ripped off here, and whether or not you care is your call. This isn't a bad album, it's just a terribly uninspired one that brings nothing to the table that wasn't already there. War From A Harlots Mouth has plenty of potential as another overnight-sensation in the metal world, because it is familiarity that sells after all. But I'm hearing nothing that I can't sift through my collection and find on a number of other albums, and to me that can't be worth recommending.  

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