California’s Rusty Eye and their album Possessor pose an interesting question: how do you take the horror cliche and not make it so “Hot Topic” like. Looking at the band’s promo poster, the members look like they were given a $500 gift card to their nearest Hot Topic and went to town. Hell, they are even posing in a morgue! When I first put Possessor into my CD player, I was expecting the worst. I was expecting crappy heavy punk rock with cheap Halloween sounds. The true result doesn’t reach my worst expectations, and even has some catchy highlights, but Rusty Eye’s latest release doesn’t do much to reach my best expectations either.

To call this release Hot Topic rock is a stretch, Rusty Eye clearly are fans of metal with influences in their music from thrash, death, progressive and goth, but I can’t help but still feel like the band is trying to hard to push their imagery instead of just writing good music. Unlike a group like, say, The Black Dahlia Murder who carry a certain horror theme with their music, but don’t pretend to be anything but a death metal band, Rusty Eye want us to think that they are a horror movie on a 13 track CD, and that really bugs me. If you can’t write a great record, everything else you shoot for as a band, in terms of promotion and identity, is useless. However, despite my believing that this is a band who is more about image than substance, I can’t take away the creativity and talent that the band definitely possesses.

Possessor is, at its very foundation, a progressive metal album, and the band orientates some interesting ideas throughout the album with some riffs that I’d actually call excellent. The harsh vocals of Mr. Rust are actually quite good and fit the music well, however, the vocals of Miss Randall are pretty bad. Miss Randall has talent, and I’d even go as far as to say that her style definitely fits this type of music, but the woman can’t project to save her life! This is a metal album Miss Randall, not a high school talent show, don’t sing like you have stage fright! Could this be an issue of poor production? Yes, and indeed I think there is a bunch of terrible production issues that plague this album, but you can’t hide the lack of confidence in someone’s voice, even one as talented as Miss Randall.

Possessor I think has achieved all the potential it can. I have never liked forcing the evil concept in a cartoonish way to an audience, because it feels so convoluted. I think if Rusty Eye focuses on writing good riffs instead of forcing what they want us to hear into our ears, they might have a bit more success, but for now, I am none too impressed with this band.

NOT BAD

Similar Artists: Danzig, Deathstars, Lacrimosa

1.    At the House by the Cemetery [intro]
2.    11.02 Day of the Dead
3.    Mondo Cane
4.    The Serial Kind
5.    Those Who Flee From The Sun
6.    Wings of a Demon
7.    Malefice [intermission]
8.    Somnambulist Possession
9.    Jerusalem Cricket Soufflé
10.    The Entity (Ghostly Lust)
11.    A Poisoned Letter
12.    Mandragora Screams
13.    Rituales de Sangre [outro]

Mr. Rust – Bass/Vocals
Miss Randall – Drums/Vocals
Baron Murtland – Guitar

Epoche Records

http://www.myspace.com/rustyeye

Review by CODY