I should love Lair of the Minotaur's The Ultimate Destroyer. The guitars are dense and crusty, billowing out thick riffs that chug along with a locomotive's determination. The vocals-- gruff, deep, and meaty-- hark back to metal's earlier days, with lyrical themes of death, destruction, and fantastical monsters. And I admit that when I've got the album cranked and no one's around my brain starts sending messages to my neck that it might be a good idea to go ahead and bang my head. Uh, not that I actually do such a thing when listening to good metal-- I mean, unless you do too.
But as the disc draws to a close, I realize I don't love it. It's good, enjoyable, solid, whatever-- but I'm unable to mouth even one of the riffs ten minutes after the record finishes. The drumming is part of the problem. While Larry Herweg's mechanical style fits here better than in his other band, Pelican, he lacks the flair and power necessary for music this beefy. The thunder-roll of the double-bass seems to be his only trick; when a strong, dynamic fill would push the moment over the top, he falls back on simpler, by-the-numbers tactics.
Taken individually, a few songs are great. The opening "Juggernaut of Metal" is exactly that: an assault of crushing guitar work and monster rhythms. "Grisly Hound of the Pit" makes the best use of the band's robotic pulse, with an opening section that rolls along like a factory assembly line. Among the strongest of the nine tracks here is the shortest and fastest, the fifty-three second "Lord of Butchery". It's the closest thing here to hardcore-thrash crossover, and one of the few songs that benefits from the singular vision and lack of variety. So while The Ultimate Destroyer isn't a strong album on the whole, it contains a few tracks that would be perfect in a playlist of the best of contemporary metal.
