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Panic Cell: Fire it up

02/08/10 || GardensTale

Well, well, well, Panic Cell. Hah, see what I did there? Seriously though, this review is not gonna be long. Why not? Because Panic Cell are not interesting. About 6-8 years ago, a fuckton of thrashy melodeath, or melodeathy thrash, whichever, was lumped onto the scene, and everyone got really tired of it very quickly. Panic Cell still live in that era, it seems, because fuck me in the spleen and call me grandma, they jumped on the bandwagon that’s already broken down and rusting on the roadside. They just spray painted it with a groove metal lacquer and called it a band.

But do they do what they do the way they should be doing it? I guess. Sort of. The production is ‘safe’, so there’s a fair amount of clarity but lacks grit. This shit should be putting my teeth on edge, but it’s mostly putting my drool on the edge of my lips as I snore away in my chair. The songwriting is all okay, the riffs are decent enough to leave Suckville and everything, although originality isn’t really their hors d’oeuvre. I don’t even know what that is, but it sounded appropriate.

I guess I should give them points for spirit, though. At least they sound like they’re trying to get a good party started, and I bet they could perform okay as a support for something like Machine Head. They’re certainly not incompetent in the instrument area, and it’s all fairly tight, at times enough to hide the blandness that keeps whispering ‘turn this off!’ in the back of my head.

But, for every plus there’s a minus. Two minuses in this case. The drums are one. Now, it’s not this fucker’s technical ability in itself that’s at stake. He’s decent enough, but he’s got two fucken flaws. He overuses the snare, and while there’s probably people who enjoy that, it’s the least favorite thing in the entire drumkit for me. Yeah, fucken hell, I know, it’s probably the most-used skin in any drumkit ever, forever. But fuck me in the thigh with a golden cactus if I wouldn’t rather be trampled by toms than listen to the yapping of overused snare hits. Secondly, the drum sound is a bit muffled. Not good when you try to float on tough guy aggression.

Which brings me to my second gripe. Oh man, I’m awesome, I’m totally writing bridges between passages and everything. Anyway, the singer. When he’s actually singing, with the basic roughed up voice that’s common in this kind of metal. But he’s way off base when he takes mushrooms and suddenly thinks he’s in Godsmack. He actually uses the sentence Know what I’m sayin’? non-ironically. He can’t pull off the tough guy act, and neither can his band. So what’s left of that? Not a whole fucking lot. No tough guys to see here, move on please.

So yeah, this review got longer than I expected, but I could’ve said it all in one sentence. You wanna hear it? Alright then, here it comes. You sure you’re ready? Well, ready or not, you’re gonna get it anyway, like herpes.

Panic Cell try very hard to be tougher than they are, and with some effort they can get there, but issues like the muffled drums and the less-than-badass singer alongside the touches of blandness and lack of personality keep them in the land of the mediocre on this disc.

Fuck me, I’m good.

5,5

Information
Released: 2010
Label: Undergroove Records
Website: www.paniccell.com
Band
Luke Bell: vocals
Harj Virdee: guitars
Nathan Wood: guitars
Bobby Town: bass
Rob Hicks: drums

Tracklist
01. Burden Inside
02. Unbroken
03. Lie To Me
04. Splitting Skulls
05. To Die For Love
06. Jaded
07. Down To The Next Time
08. Black Juice
09. Right Here Waiting
10. Forever
11. To Die For Lust

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