Daath - Futility

All Music Guide

Daath's 2004 debut album, Futility, may have been a modest, selffinanced affair, but it wasted no time in introducing the Atlanta, GAbased group's ambitious, electronic/industrial death metal, laden with mystical lyrics uniquely inspired by the Jewish Kabbalah. In addition, the sextet showed a few minor traces of numetal in the Jonathan Davislike vocal styles scattered across 90second intro "The One" and subsequent cuts "Child Says" (highly syncopated, borderline nonsensical) and "Concentrate Living" (tormented mewling), along with a twisted, Faith No Morelike je ne sais quoi about the mysterious, genreimmune "Slow." Meanwhile, the curiously "tidy" riffing style underpinning the provocatively named "Blender for the Baby" recalls Cleansingera Prong, and the doomy triphop of "Crystasis" has much in common with Australian spacemetal nerds Alchemist both songs revealing even more layers to Daath's eclectic tableau. Yet none of these tangential influences can compete with Daath's foremost ...debt to Fear Factory, and it's the industrial metal titans' trademarked harnessing of extreme metal savagery to technology assisted discipline that fuels the magical dichotomy embodied by mechanized onslaughts like "Placenta," "Filter" (which also boasts softer techno touches reminiscent of Depeche Mode) and "Infestation." It would be these last three songs mentioned that eventually pointed the creative path down which Daath should proceed in, transcending all of the disparate influences they so vaguely explored on Futility in order to conjure up a truly distinctive industrial/symphonic/Kabbalistic/death metal mutation for their sophomore album and Roadrunner debut, The Hinderers. - Eduardo Rivadavia, All Music Guide Read more Less