Despite my exaggerated claims of possessing godlike reviewing abilities nand above-average genitals, I really am probably an every-man, a man's man, an average Joe clawing tooth-and-nail to somehow become rich and famous by writing reviews for Greek music website. I bring that up because it has absolutely nothing to do with everything I'm about to say.

BY THE PATIENT is our band du jour, more specifically this release called "Premonitions". For the uninformed and/or lazy, they best fit in the genre called melodic death metal, I'd guess. I'm not so sure, though, because it seems like Metal has more than its fair share of subgenres, sub-subgenres, and micro-sub-subgenres. It's not good enough to call something death metal, no no! That's too simple. It's melodic Death Metal, or brutal Death Metal, or progressive Death Metal, or melodic jazz harmonic doomy gloomy fresh and fruity brutal Death Metal. I hope my contempt for the specifics is obvious enough.

Well no more fucking around, let's get right to the meaty layer. This album is definitely passed the threshold of "good", but there are definitely malignant tumours of shit keeping it from fitting through the doorway into "really good". There's plenty of well-written riffs and leads and fills and such, and several songs have some very inspired hooks to listen for. But the problem is that this vocalist "Tan" must have some father issues of some kind, because he just does not know that you don't need to blather and shout over every single riff all the time. It's distracting. I want to hear some of the other musical set pieces, Tan, is that allowed? Don't worry; no one's going to abandon you like your father must have because you haven't yelled anything for six seconds.

And having said that, where's everybody else? Where's the instrumental piece to give us a nice break from all the shouting about depression and how much people are shit and whatever the hell he's blathering on about? Where's the clean fills or melodies? Goddamnit, variety is the spice of life. So logically no variety must be the sweetness of life. And if that is true, then "Premonitions"is the sweetest album since "Reign in Blood".

Sadly, it's everyone else that suffers for this. Of all the problems an album could have, this is one you could easily solve with a simple tube sock rammed elegantly into his fucking trap.