As I Lay Dying - 'Decas' (metalblade) 1.5/5

Hum, this latest offering from California metalcore merchants As I Lay Dying is a bit of a weird one. Basically it can be split into three sections, Three new tracks, three covers and then five remixes from their back catalogue.

Things start of promisingly enough. The three original new tracks are good enough slices of passably good metalcore that tick all the right boxes for the genre; nice crunchy pit friendly riffs, pig grunt verses, big clean harmony choruses, nothing too earth shattering over all but good enough to pass muster, especially Moving Forward, which is raised above the ordinary with some impressive guitar work

Then we move onto the covers section, and things here are not so hot. Now I'm of the opinion that classic tracks should only be covered if your gonna go and do something interesting with them, and sadly that is not the case here. The rendition of the Slayer classic War Ensemble comes over like an iffy tribute band, Judas Priests Hellion / Electric Eye is a bold attempt that is destined to fail, the Hellion works well enough but Electric Eye falls flat as with core style pig grunts on the verse just doesn't work and the clean vocals on the bridge bring back horrible nightmares of the Ripper Owens days (shudder). The Descendants Coffee Mug  is a nice bit of hardcore thrashage, and I'm not that familiar with the original so will refrain from making any more comments on that front.

Then we have the remix section. This starts off surprisingly enough with a medley of old AILD tracks entitled Beneath The Encasing that is pretty nifty and is probably the best track on offer on the entire album. However then things really go tits up.I have never got on with dance music, I find it messy and the inane repetitive drum pattens bring a psychotic reaction in me. It really does make me want to commit acts of brutal and bloody violence on who is ever producing the racket in order to make them stop.

I did force myself to listen to the last four tracks here to try to get a handle on them, but I only ended up feeling sick and wanting to turn the mindless crap off. If you like this sort of thing then more power to you but as for me.. I like my rock rocking and not butchered by monkeys with drum machines.

Over all this album is a bit of a waste of time if you ask me, and not one I'll be keeping in the collection or giving air time to.

for fans of... As I Lay Dying (everyone else should give this one a miss)