Progress

Heavy metal never corrodes, it just warps. Death metal, rap metal, black metal, industrial metal, glam-metal, nu-metal – there are 666 ways to polish a turd. Even as we speak, somewhere in the Midwest, some big-haired Great White or Cinderella tribute band are drivin’ the stonewashed and frizzy perm brigade wild at the local county fair.

Ultraspank (whose name is surpassed in awfulness only by this album’s cover – the famous gross-out shot of a human ear grafted onto a rat’s back) represent the credible end of the spectrum, which is to say, they sport tattoos, piercings and extravagant facial hair.

Musically, we’re talking doomy Sabs chords, turn-on-a-dime dynamics, growly/operatic vocals and Olympic-level drumming. Progress is the band’s second album, and contrary to the title, it doesn’t establish many fresh beachheads – if anything, this is old-nu-metal.

So, without denigrating impressively athletic performances from the players, Ultraspank stop way short of contemporary techno innovations: the full-on skullfuck of Slipknot, the self-flagellation of NIN, even the EC Comics buffoonery of Rob Zombie or Marilyn.

For the most part, the ’Spank subsist on a staunch diet of musical meat and potatoes.

Consequently, there’s nothing wrong with Progress, but it’s hardly a distinguished piece of work either. The casual browser who already owns records by Soulfly or The Deftones need not dally.