Take a handful of Sex Pistols riffs, add a healthy dose of The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, throw in some Birthday Party, some wailing feedback and distortion, some filthy-sounding bass, and a handful of tunes that don’t last more than three minutes each, and it should be fairly impossible to make a bad album.
Somehow Death Index have managed anyway. It doesn’t help that the production gives the impression that much of this 10-track debut was recorded through the wall of the studio, muffled and vaguely muted where it should be raw and all powerful, but more annoying is the fact that you’ll probably spend far too much time trying to like it and wondering why you don’t.
Could it be that the drums sound like a drum machine? Quite likely, since this is a two-piece band.
Could it be that the frontman sounds like he’s singing into a mirror, concerned more about looks than substance? Possibly. But more likely it’s that Death Index has the potential to be brilliant and it is not.
