TROXYGEN, Demo (2012, demo)

The skull:
This skull clealy suffers from some kind of hydroencephaly – look at how huge his dome is – and has attempted to relieve the pressure by ramming a cross into his forehead. Except, wait, is that forked tongue part of the cross? What the hell? This doesn’t make any sense. And why is he wearing mirrored glasses? Does he think some bitchin’ shades will distract the ladies from his enormous, bulbous, horned head? If so, this dude is seriously living in denial.

The music:
Troxygen describe themselves as “crudge metal,” which I assume is a portmanteau of “crust” and “sludge,” although as far as I can tell, they’re just a shitty death/thrash band (“dash metal,” to those in the know). Yes, they slow it down to almost dirgey tempos at times, but that would at best make them “croom metal,” and that’s assuming there was some actual crust in the sound, which there isn’t. “Crudge” nevertheless rings true, because that’s a descriptor that absolutely no one would associate with quality. These two songs are dreadfully dull and performed without passion. Truly unnecessary stuff.
—Friar Johnsen