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Otep - Hydra review



Reviewer:
2.5

41 users:
5.83
Band: Otep
Album: Hydra
Release date: January 2013


01. Rising
02. Blowtorch Nightlight
03. Seduce & Destroy
04. Crush
05. Hematopia
06. Necromantic
07. Quarantine
08. Voyeur
09. Apex Predator
10. Feral Game
11. Livestock
12. Hag
13. Theophagy

"Hey, Dane! Want to review the new Otep alum?"

" Opeth? Hell yeah!"

"No, Otep."

"Ummm...sure. Who are they?"

So apparently this band has been around for a while. From what I can gather, Otep is to Korn what Arch Enemy is to In Flames. Having no clue who they were, I did some quick research. First warning sign is that this band was picked up by Sharon Osbourne and played their 8th show ever at Ozzfest.

This is going to hurt, isn't it?

From the very beginning of this record I was already turned off. The over produce narrative opening has this whole faux macabre feeling that would make H.P. Lovecraft vomit in shame. Sadly, it doesn't get better from there. This entire album drips with the immature angst of a poet wannabe, as lead singer (and I use that term in the most liberal manner I can), Otep Shamaya tries and miserably fails to be artistic. One gets the feeling that Hot Topic kids wearing baggy jeans with way too many zippers on them, all had a circle jerk while they cried about how different they are from their peers, who don't understand them, and were recorded in a studio then compiled onto this CD.

Everything here is as grating as wiping your ass with a cheese shredder. Shamya's vocals are nothing more than a combination of non-flattering whispers and studio-raped screams. These may possibly be the worst vocals I have heard in a long time, and that includes the high school hardcore acts at the talent show last week. Speaking of high school, this music is the same uninspiring dribble I heard 15 years ago in my youth. It wasn't any good then, so what on earth made them think it would be good now? Are these the lost B-sides to Coal Chamber?

Dear miss Shamya, one Mr. Johnathan Davis called, he wants his signature crybaby anger back. Oh crap, she is trying to rap now!? When will it stop? Hydra, being just another dime-a-dozen nu metal act, wouldn't be so bad if it had been made a decade ago. I don't even have an issue with it being nu metal. I have an issue with it being a terrible nu metal album. This is the Tommy Wiseau of metal album; a confused and muddled train-wreck of unoriginal ideas executed by a directionless self-proclaimed hack of an artists. It seems like Otep saw that ICP's "Miracles" music video had 12 million views and said "damn, we need to hop on that bandwagon!"

As a reviewer I have to be fair and point of both the weaknesses and strengths of any given album. Are there any good things about this monotonous record? I am happy to say there is one. This is the last Otep album being made.





Written on 17.03.2013 by Dane hails from Asheville, NC which is Beer City, USA. When he is not drinking various craft and micro brews, Dane fronts the Stoner Doom Metal band, The Quick. He also has a massive collection of Hellboy comic books.


Comments page 2 / 2

Comments: 46   Visited by: 544 users
20.03.2013 - 01:54
marzepka87

Quote:
The music is completely awful, no doubt about it... But it's still metal.


Sadly you are right... One can only dream I guess
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20.03.2013 - 02:05
marzepka87

Quote:
Yea, I figure people like this either have really bad hearing or they're just kissing somebodies ass.

Chances are it's a combination of both factors... they say everyone has their preferences when it comes to music, but this is just unbearable, I tried listening to a song and felt the urge to
Thankfully I've got the entire Manegarm discography to make the awful pain go away
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20.03.2013 - 04:20
-DC-002-
Mastercommander
Everyone who has listened to this album, your toil and sacrifice in listening to this is not for nothing! I salute you as you as you are written into the anals of history.
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Coldgrits
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21.03.2013 - 23:04
Jaeryd
Nihil's Maw
Written by -DC-002- on 20.03.2013 at 04:20

Everyone who has listened to this album, your toil and sacrifice in listening to this is not for nothing! I salute you as you as you are written into the anals of history.

It's annals, not anals. You just told us that were were written into the ass-area of history. But I guess with this album that would be accurate enough.
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22.03.2013 - 04:11
-DC-002-
Mastercommander
Written by Jaeryd on 21.03.2013 at 23:04

Written by -DC-002- on 20.03.2013 at 04:20

Everyone who has listened to this album, your toil and sacrifice in listening to this is not for nothing! I salute you as you as you are written into the anals of history.

It's annals, not anals. You just told us that were were written into the ass-area of history. But I guess with this album that would be accurate enough.


i know thanks for catching that.
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Coldgrits
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23.03.2013 - 23:53
BlackHalo83

Overall a safe album for me. I mean this is what Otep is, they are like the metal version of a Poetry Slam. Why bitch on that. Although its recycled material the album is still good. Not their best by a long shot and not their worst. But 2.5 is just too much of a bad rating for this album. I'd say a 6 or 5.5, average because I don't feel an album deserves a 2.5 unless you actually know Otep good enough to really analyze and base your review on your Otep experience.
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25.03.2013 - 06:54
DraconianJays

You all really just need to stop your hate-bashing and stop criticizing something you don't understand a single bit about. It's one thing to be ignorant, but to release that ignorance with negativity is pretty bad and especially when your idol is In Flames.
----
One is only as ignorant as they choose to be
-DraconianJays
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25.03.2013 - 12:35
Marcel Hubregtse
Grumpy Old Fuck
Written by DraconianJays on 25.03.2013 at 06:54

You all really just need to stop your hate-bashing and stop criticizing something you don't understand a single bit about.


what's there to understand? The only thing to understand is that this album is a heap of steaming shit.
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Member of the true crusade against European Flower Metal

Yesterday is dead and gone, tomorrow is out of sight
Dawn Crosby (r.i.p.)
05.04.1963 - 15.12.1996

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25.03.2013 - 13:00
!J.O.O.E.!
Account deleted
Talking about ignorance yet our friend doesn't believe in modern medicine.
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25.03.2013 - 18:11
Dane Train
Beers & Kilts
Written by DraconianJays on 25.03.2013 at 06:54

You all really just need to stop your hate-bashing and stop criticizing something you don't understand a single bit about. It's one thing to be ignorant, but to release that ignorance with negativity is pretty bad and especially when your idol is In Flames.


Whose idol is In Flames? Not mine, that is for sure.
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(space for rent)
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25.03.2013 - 19:26
psykometal
A staff guy...
Wonderful thing about opinions is that it doesn't matter if anybody else agrees with you or not because it's still your opinion and a few disagreeing whiners aren't going to change it.
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~Zep, Database and Forum Moderation~

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19.04.2013 - 15:17
DraconianJays

Written by Guest on 25.03.2013 at 13:00

Talking about ignorance yet our friend doesn't believe in modern medicine.


So not only can you people criticize a band/culture you know nothing about but now you're going to criticize my beliefs and way of life. So it isn't really the culture at all, you all just like to hate and it doesn't really matter what it is. It appears I'm not the ignorant one here. Big pharma (legal hardcore narcotics) doesn't create cures, it creates more customers, the only way they thrive is to guarantee that you stay sick so they keep their customers. Pharmaceutical users have to recover twice, once from the disease and another from the drug. All this is elementary common sense, but I guess I was asking for too much for people to open their minds wide enough to see a perspective that's not selfish for once. Why would I want this: http://www.naturalnews.com/039958_prescription_drugs_side_effects_dangers.html when the fruit Soursop works 100x better at KILLING cancer right in it's tracks without the use of harmful drugs that kill all the other organs in your body on it's way out without the guarantee that it'll even work to begin with?

Leaving the talent level of music aside for now, do any of you criticizing Korn/Otep actually know what an EXTREMELY messed up child-hood feels like? Do you know what it feels like to be molested and raped by a family member for multiple years, to be psychically, emotionally and psychologically abused your entire childhood? To live with fear every second of your life, and that fear be induced by your own father/mother? Do any of you even know what shell shock feels like, to flinch every time someone around makes a move too quickly because you are used to your father hitting you all the time? For him to confess that he purposely uses fear because "that seems to be the only thing to work", and then go to school and passively accepting being bullied for years on end because your father has you too afraid to ever speak up for yourself? To not be able to have a descent relationship with you spouse because your sexual abuse from your own trusted family member has distorted your perception of what a lover should be? I don't think many of you could comprehend any of this. These bands aren't wining about anything, they are voicing their experience in an effort to reach out to those that know the same type of pain they've been through. It's not their fault that they have some Hot Pocket shoppers buying their CDs. Korn empowered a generation of neglected/abused children to stand up for themselves and take their lives back into their own hands. If Korn never have existed there's no way I'd be the strong man I am today. Aside from the fact that Jon is in fact a great vocalist that could hold his own against most Death Metal bands without busting a sweat, or that Reginald "Fieldy" is the one of the best bassist players in Rock/Metal history, or that David Silveria could no doubt keep up/out preform so many of the Rock/Metal world. As band altogether no, they don't compare to most other Metal bands, but they never claimed to be metal in the first place, and neither did Otep, that is just a label that the music industry put on them.

You all can nit-pick me all day and I'll just shoot your bias perceptions down with facts, or your can grow up, expand your perception and get a real hobby that evolves being a real man and not criticizing others especially when you know nothing about them.
----
One is only as ignorant as they choose to be
-DraconianJays
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19.04.2013 - 18:54
Boxcar Willy
yr a kook


Okay there buddy. Obviously you're living in a bit of a diluted world, so I'll just let you be.
----
14:22 - Marcel Hubregtse
I do your mum

DESTROY DRUM TRIGGERS
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07.07.2013 - 08:46
DraconianJays

Written by Boxcar Willy on 19.04.2013 at 18:54



Okay there buddy. Obviously you're living in a bit of a diluted world, so I'll just let you be.


Me diluted? You still praise darkness as if it were your master, that's probably because it is. Don't let your ego rule your actions for the entirety of your life, for it is fear and darkness that rule the ego, the false-self. Your ruling ego wont take you very far in life, to progress you must unlearn what you have learned and suffocate that ego before it destroys and everyone else around.
----
One is only as ignorant as they choose to be
-DraconianJays
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08.07.2013 - 08:36
Boxcar Willy
yr a kook
Written by DraconianJays on 07.07.2013 at 08:46


Me diluted? You still praise darkness as if it were your master, that's probably because it is. Don't let your ego rule your actions for the entirety of your life, for it is fear and darkness that rule the ego, the false-self. Your ruling ego wont take you very far in life, to progress you must unlearn what you have learned and suffocate that ego before it destroys and everyone else around.

Whatever you're on, take more of it.
----
14:22 - Marcel Hubregtse
I do your mum

DESTROY DRUM TRIGGERS
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08.07.2013 - 09:20
psykometal
A staff guy...
Ok guys this thread is for discussing Otep's latest musical output, not battling to see who is the best quipster.
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~Zep, Database and Forum Moderation~

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