Professional Murder Music
Professional Murder Music
Geffen
Professional? Sure. Music? That it is. But murder(ing)? Not quite. Such are the problematics of Professional Murder Music’s eponymous debut album. From their futuristic goth-glam image to their gloom-infested cyberpunk-on-methadone riffs to the various post-digital synth gurgles to even the Josh Abraham production (he delivers nicely here, despite the wanting material), the quartet feebly attempt to one-up Orgy, which, if you’ve heard their stellar, Abraham-produced Vapor Transmission from last year, is damn near impossible. That’s not to say I didn’t want to like this, and aside from the (inadvertent) nods to Amorphis’ current brand of equally gloomy atmospheric metal, Professional Murder Music nonetheless fails to rise to the insurmountable challenge. I mean, they’ve got the hooks and they’ve got the look, but they just don’t cut it in this respect (i.e., besting Orgy). Still, they do a cool cover of The Cure’s “A Night Like This,” but it’s not too difficult to fuck up The Cure, that horrid One Hundred Tears tribute notwithstanding. So, forget the Orgy pretensions, and you’ve got a pretty substantial debut. Next one, maybe.
Geffen Redords, 2220 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90404; http://www.murdermusic.com
