NDE
End of Trust

October 2003
Released: 2003, Crash Music
Rating: 1.5/5
Reviewer: JP

The good people at Crash Music have sent us a number of new releases and I am going to do a little focus on five diverse releases on this up and coming label. Enjoy the reviews (Hedfirst, NDE, Throcult, Twelfth Gate, Unearthly) and don’t forget to check out our Crash Music Contest in our contest section. The answers to the trivia contest are found in these reviews so read all of them carefully and enter for your chance to win a CD from Crash!



I don’t know what Crash was thinking. Why on earth would they sign a mallcore band? NDE provides little of interest or value to metal fans. Yes, they have electric guitars but that about it.



It starts with the typical shouted vocal (distorted for effect of course!) draining the vocals of all range or power. The vocals are too far back in the mix. If you are going to do the ‘angry young man’ thing at least have the angry vocals upfront in the mix. The vocalist should learn to put some enthusiasm and passion in his voice, don’t let the studio trickery try to compensate for lack of effort, it fails every-time. Inter-spliced with the yelling and shouting is the whiny spoken word style that makes it even worse. If you are trying to create aggression/emotion don’t whine.



The guitars are one dimensional, barely anything that resembles a complex riff, lick or solo, just lots of open strumming. The drums and bass are par for the course just thumping along slowly and predictably without any drive or flair. Track three ‘Gear Box’ picks up the pace a little but the song quickly falls into the same dull pattern. Probably the best cut on the disc.



The lyrics are your typical teen angst thing that was popularized by grunge…complaining about everything, no solutions offered only words not deeds. All this talk about survival and willpower, defiance and so on which is nice but rings hollow mixed in with the complaining about society. There is that unpleasant hint of the hip-hop verbalization style…not out-and-out rap but that really bouncy, happy rhyming style that brings bad images of so many other bands that speak the lyrics, not sing them.



This is pretty bad overall. Just another generic band, lacking vision or talent doomed to be one of the forgotten bands, lost in a sea of faceless imitators. If you like really simple, down-tuned hard rock with not much guitar or innovation you might want to check this out but I wouldn’t waste my time.