Ryan dropped me off at the curb of the Virgin America lead – in to LAX. We were stoned silly, ripped and thirsty, and he was leaving me to fend for myself in this God–awful land of the Los Angeles International Airport. With eyes glazed and my high top Chucks sparkling, I made it to gate 37A with time to spare and the Soundtrack to the sixth installment of the Saw series to jam hard to. I ignored the obese New Zealand couple dry humping and staining the leather chairs in front of me, shut my eyes, and took the 18-track beast of a metaphorical rustic and heavy rollercoaster straight to the stoned fuzzy dome piece.

Hatebreed erupts and kills any bacterial mediocrity left on the restraints with ‘In Ashes They Shall Reap.’ Jasta steps it up like I’ve never heard before with a melodic touch crushing a progressive verse and steps, however slightly, out of the proverbial Hatebreed breakdown box. Lacuna Coil lays down a drab ‘The Last Goodbye’ which is soft enough to close an episode of Grey’s Anatomy or put my sweet lady’s baby to sleep. The jam closes just as the our ride comes to a near halt of boredom with an out of touch guitar medley that could have been ripped from any of Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s early teen demos…..And hold onto ya’ butts! It Dies Today fuckin’ rolls heavily into ‘Reckless Abandon’ just as we drop the ten thousand feet into a pit of Metalcore madness.

We roll fast and hard thru a pit of liberty spikes and breakdowns that grooves like no other jam on the record….for about four minutes, and then Mushroomhead slows the entire mechanism down, killing the rush, and dooming the buzz. A rear-ended, less-than-funky demotion that creeps up the spine, damaging the spirit of the whole album. And then when my baked logic expected a much better jam, the goddamn boxcar took a hard left into a dirty shit stained wall with Chimaira spray painted on it. They show up just as we miss the wall and they present another boring metal jam with no feeling…..simply fucking boring. The gut covered metal head in the seat behind me nearly jumped to his death because of the horrible let down we were all feeling. Danko Jones rocks on and picks up the pace with a sweet little track jammin’ on about the code of the road. A power slob groove that leads the tracks upward towards a better place far away from its two predecessors. There’s a moment of a break and I can hear Suicide Silence start to jam, but it’s escaping me. What the fuck? My god, there’s a little girl and she’s taken my headphones off. What does she want? She’s alone and my beard screams child molester and my clothes ooze rapist. Why me? She just stands there, and just as I went to inquire about her place in the world, she pisses her pants and starts to cry. Was I really that high? Was it my last taste of California Kush before leaving that brought on this horrible demon child? A man came rushing from the fields and snatched her up, stabbing me in the face with his eyes as he held this piss stained girl in some father – daughter embrace.

Suicide Silence murders anything less than brutal and rips the limbs from the weak with the Saw VI Remix of ‘Genocide’, one of the few tracks that could essentially be tied to the movie. Heavy. Gorey. Eccentric and delivers with a possible concussion. Memphis May Fire gallops along after Suicide Silence with ‘Ghost In The Mirror’, the most original jam on the album and one that brings with it smiles and four boney knuckles to the jaw. It’s a jumpy acoustic piece with superbly placed heavy post – punk buildups and slamming into the courtyard of some Studio City apartment complex after leaping from the second story of Ryan’s apartment. “Save Yourself From The Lies That Brought My Father To His Knees!” Epic Jam. Shadows Fall and Type O Negative roll on hard. Both amazing bands that rip heavy tracks that only raise the bar. A New Wave Of American Metal thrash jam remixed for the Saw VI Soundtrack followed by a doomy gloomy Vinlandian masterpiece ripped from Type O’s Dead Again. My Kush was fading and my plane was docked. Converge sucked the skin from face and let it slam – dance hard back on to my tired bones. SMACK! ‘Dark Horse’ is heavy and groovy and dead on with what I feel the record based on the Saw series should sound like. Not too progressive or tricky with a killer lead and smooth vocals. Fast and laced with montage feelings of “Get The Fuck Outta’ My Face!” Three minutes of blissful insanity. Kittie follows Converge with ‘Cut Throat’. Kittie pulls hard from the Thousand Mile Whiskey bottle of lip smacking fuck me harder metal, as they have from day one. They have never gotten their due respect, and ‘Cut Throat’ is another example of them not giving a shit. Why don’t they give a shit? “Fuck You”. That’s why.

I stood at my chair leering at the other passengers about to board my plane. The New Zealand couple boarded Australian Airlines a while ago, leaving swabs of juices and sweat stains all over the place. Nitzer Ebb’s ‘Never Known’ oozes a love making bass line with simple buildups and tempting a mellow delivery. “I Came Two Thousand Miles For Just One Of Your Smiles!” and the irony of the line hit me with the fact that I’m about to fly three thousand simply to see the smile of my lady, and what a sexy one it is. I’ve never known anything, but I really dig this jam. No longer high – lost track of the rollercoaster metaphor long ago, and about to ride coach between a passed out redneck and a pissed off Chinaman for five hours, I needed a drink. Every Time I Die’s ‘Roman Holiday’ screamed at me to skip the flight and hit the bar with its chunky awful delivery. We’d grooved for so long and they jammed a polished turd right down my throat. My My Misfire came next…watered down Atreyu with less character. Things weren’t looking too good for the rest of the album. The lines moved and people boarded.

I hung back hoping that Flood’s ‘Lethal Injection’ would save some sense of decency that I felt earlier. I felt like pissing my pants just as the little girl did. The savior didn’t doo too well until about two minutes into it, at which what I thought was a 36 Crazyfist doppelganger morphed into a heavy early Tool-esque trip to some sinister place. They rocked hard. In closing, and rightly so, James Brothers’ ‘More Than A Sin’ took my jumbling of thoughts and melodramatically pieced them together in the darkest and sexiest of ways. It’s an acoustic jam that surprisingly held more emotion and soul than the entire album. The reality of the whole situation fell on me hard, draped from my head down to my Chucks, and washed away. I was leaving California and California was leaving me. No more desperate mornings or less than subtle hangovers. The Saw VI Soundtrack wasn’t life changing or epic by any means, but it’s a trip. It’s a ride from Hatebreed to James Brothers, and nothing in between should be taken lightly, for better or worse. The opening erupts in violence and the closing track puts the soul at ease.

I’m all about 3 Guns for this album.

Label: Trustkill – Rating:

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