Band:	CounterignitioN
Album:	Spit Or Swallow
Style:	Thrash metal
Release date:	June 2011

01. Recalled System
02. Ordinary Mortal Man
03. Sell Your Soul
04. Secret To You... Denied
05. End Of Mine
06. Fight
07. Border
08. Lawless
09. World Of Lies
10. Life Sentenced
11. Daire

Ladies, gents, fleshlights, please remember that there's a third option to the spit or swallow question. That is, don't forget that you can always go with "neither". Go ahead, lay down the law. Be firm, "No thanks, Counter. I'm sleepy. Turn this off." Be strong.

See, Spit or Swallow is a messy album. And not messy in a cool, fuck off, I don't care, punk rock, quasi-nihilistic sort of way. Messy in a sticky, "you know, I think I might make a run to the store; we're gonna need some more Clorox wipes" way. Messy in the sort of way that just needs to be cleaned up. Yeah, sloppiness definitely has its place in metal; if it adds to an album's attitude, it can be most excellent and most rad (listen to any of Darkthrone's post-Sardonic Wrath stuff right the fuck now), but the sloppiness here isn't contributing to any. It's simply a mess.

Which sucks. Hard. Because there is some promising shredding to be heard in this. When Counter resists the urge to whine, goes balls out, and doesn't get (or pretend to be) sad, they sound pretty good. Some of the riffs are exciting, the vocals?though pretty iffy?sometimes sound fairly nasty. Brutal even.

Sometimes. More often than not, Counter comes across as if they don't quite know what they want to do. Or rather, like they know roughly what they want to do, but can't execute it properly. They play your average groove/thrash hybrid stuff, but whine. Too much. And that sucks hard too. Whenever they get close to capturing a cool attitude, they blow it. All over the place. Either with a boring riff, a weak solo, or a singing segment.

Each song sounds like it follows a strict blueprint, but takes as many emotional and attitudinal shortcuts as possible. This might be due to the band's age, but since I doubt there was a deadline for them to complete Spit, there really isn't any excuse for the fact that it sounds rushed. Once again, rushed, sloppy albums can be fucking killer, but this one doesn't follow that trend. It needed more time to gestate.

At any rate. Despite some cool moments, CounterIgnitioN has CounterIgniteD my attention over and over and over, and listening to this album all the way through has been a chore. So mark this down as another example of a below average album from a pretty talented young band.