I, Cursed – Death Holograms
“I, Cursed? I, Pass."
Written by Big Bear Buchko

I, Cursed.

I get what they mean – they mean, like, “I am cursed.”

But when you say it out loud, it’s just “I cursed.” Like, “Sowwy, uwu, I said bad word.”

But hang on, maybe the album title will help save t…

…the fuck is a “death hologram” and why is there more than one?

It sounds like a reflective foil Pokémon card.

“Aww, you played Demented Charizard? Well, I play Death Holograms!”

“Noo, not Death Holograms! You… sunk my Pikachu” or some shit; I don’t know, I don’t play Pokémon. But all right, how many members are we dealing with here? How many full-time, full-fledged members of I, Cursed are going to be bringing the Death Hologr… two. There’s two? Just… two? All right, so, we’ve got the bedroom antics of a deathcore White Stripes thing going on here. Fantastic. And since their press release kit didn’t actually contain any information about the band, I’m going to have to guess my best here at who does what, and a quick listen (and I do mean “quick”) through Death Holograms has almost certainly assured me that neither one of them is the drummer. The blast beats are too perfect, the cymbal hits are too in sync, the volume level is too predictable and clear for there to be an honest and actual drummer behind this band. My guess is this is two guys in a suburban house somewhere, both playing guitar around a laptop with USB microphones that packed a heftier price tag than most of their instruments.

The oddest thing about this album is that, in the short time it’s taken me to write less than 300 words, I’ve already gone back through every track in almost its complete entirety. This is because four of the seven songs featured on  Death Magnetic Holograms are under two minutes in length. It’s almost nice, in a way; by the time I’ve decided a song sucks and why – it’s over! I wish more bands were as straightforward in their releases as I, Cruiseship here. I know I wouldn’t be so consistent at butchering review deadlines, if that were the case. But I’m going to attempt to craft this article with the same kind of sudden and drastic stoppages as the album itself, to properly convey the surprises and disappointments of listening to such an inelegant and underwhelmingly produced production.

“A Gathering of Immense.” That’s where the title ends. I’ve looked all through their files, the absence of paperwork, and everything everywhere just says “A Gathering of Immense.” A gathering of immense what?

Emotions?

Bunnies?

Hotdogs?

It’s another opening track typical for the modern deathcore genre; where everybody is trying to be 300bpm and 200mph right out of the gate. It’s not necessary in the slightest but bands keep doing it, so here we are, writing about it once more. The vocals are mixed in way too low and way too far to the back, an- oh, the song’s done. Okay. That was… all right. Holy shit, was that short. But maybe that’s just the intro-style of the song.

“Blades.”  Not one Wesley Snipes but two! Two Blades. To battle the Death Holograms. Anyway. The blast beats are so by-the-book and by-the-numbers that I’m almost entirely convinced it’s a drum machine or beat-laden program now. The vocals are still too low and too far to the back, so I have to assume it’s the sound they’re going for, but I’m not sure “no microphone/p.a. system, so just strain-yelling over music” is the kind of patina a band would wan- and holy shit, this one’s over already too! What the hell is going on here?

The title track – “Death Holograms” – and the first to cross into the 2-minute barrier. This is where I’m really starting to notice the amount of noise on this record. It’s not the guitars, it’s not the probable drum machine – unless either of those are being run through some kind of heavily distorted atmospheric chorus pedal. It’s almost as if they ran a noise filter… a PRO-noise filter… an ADDING noise filter… over the songs when they were done to give them a grittier edge. I almost accidentally found a groove in the drum beat but, before I could zero in on it enough to tell… you guessed it, the song ended. Goddamn. An album with seven tracks and a ten-minute runtime. And it’s not like that couldn’t work. Mindless Self Indulgence released several albums with a handful of 2-minutes-or-less songs, except those songs were still fun and still good. This whole thing is starting to feel like they were testing out their update of Audacity and decided to call the results an EP. Why?

The music gets better as the tracks tick on, but the vocals still suffer from major mixing impotence. There are several songs – mainly Sorrower and Vermin – where it seems that a genuine chorus is present and that there might be a real song underneath all this, but it’s too hard to tell with the vocals sounding like the band’s playing in the living room and the singer is just shouting from the bathroom. There is no part of this album where the final result wouldn’t have been substantially better with a knowledgeable and talented record producer to oversee everything. Because the players are decent, both of them, but there is so much here that is sloppy and poorly-handled that it kills any real hope of enjoyment on an artistic level.

In the hour or so that I’ve taken to write this article, I have listened to Death Hobograms at least seven times. And I still don’t know what I’ve listened to, but I’m glad it’s over. On the bright side, I could see these guys going on to do something great, they just need to be directed, controlled, and handled with a more professional ear. Until then – I,Cursed?

I, Pass.