Pro-Pain
(Mayhem)
by Chaz Thorndike
Escaping the vortex of Energy, Pro-Pain release a self-titled, 11-song, 36-minute, self-produced album of hardcore/metal powerchords and corrosive vocals on Mayhem. Summing up their history, perhaps the reader can see why I’m having increasing difficulty liking Pro-Pain. From the ashes of The Crumbsuckers – NYHC’s Rush if that makes sense – Pro-Pain released a metalcore record (Foul Taste of Freedom) with piss-poor hard rock production, thus weakening a rather riff-heavy album after which Gary Meskil realized barking/shouting was a much better option than “singing.” Following was The Truth Hurts with its “shocking” album artwork (a post-autopsy photo of a woman looking, in a sick way, rather sexy, sloppy stitching and rigor mortis aside) that covered up the fact that Pro-Pain was beginning to sound a lot like uninspired Pantera. All monster truck production, fewer riffs, fewer choruses you could recite 10 minutes after the song finished. Ditto with Contents Under Pressure, which I never listened to more than twice. And now the self-titled Pro-Pain comes along and all I can think of is M.O.D. This thundering chugfest reminds me of Ministry’s use of guitars – all power for power’s sake and not a damn thing worth trying to learn – and the main thing I hate about hardcore (sorry, kids, write nasty letters if you want, but please have your mom check your grammar first) – it all stays in the same range, plugs relentlessly away at the same few notes, screams and screams about topics that are so timelessly fucked up, it’s barely worth mentioning anymore. Pro-Pain is a modern day Twisted Sister. “We’re Not Going to Take It” and all that happy horseshit.
It’s not that Pro-Pain is such a bad record, ’cause it certainly exemplifies a stripped-down to basics approach (imagine Pantera without all the showing off), an urbancore aesthetic that, while well-respected in certain circles, I just don’t find very interesting. Next we come to the obviousness. What’s the use in listening to something you’ve never heard if you can predict exactly where it’s going? Then we get into blatant plagiarism, intentional or not. Put it this way, seeing as how most of the chord structures here are rudimentary to begin with (that’s a polite way of saying any first year guitarist can chug along with these, not to mention write better), it’s almost criminal that they’re liberated. (Not all of them, naturally, just the good ones.) Opening in fourth gear, “Get Real” could’ve been written by anyone. Ditto with the trudging turd “Time” (a single, huh?). But it’s “No Love Lost” that really irks me. It’s slowed down Clawfinger. Simplified, no less. But it’s the exact metal rap over a chomp-chomp guitar with a slow, almost “does that really go?” drum line. Only Pro-Pain takes all the excitement out of it. Same with “Don’t Kill Yourself to Live,” the other “obvious” single, which again reminds me of what would happen if Clawfinger wrote a riff, let a suburban high school hardcore/metal band play it again and again, and let that puffy-headed fruit from Nitro (the band, not the label) write some stupid tougher-than-life lyrics about freight trains, and then it got released before anyone with a brain lined those responsible up against the wall, putting them out of our misery as a public service. Perhaps that’s taking things a bit far, but you get the point. Can I make that Twisted Sister point again?
