I remember being a teenager. I was fortunate enough to know about actual Metal when the legions of imitations were being blared over the airwaves. As the masses hyped a constant stream of bland, boring, whiny, corporate Rap/Rock fusing, image-based products devoid of emotion and talent, I enjoyed a glorious education in the various genres of Extreme Metal. For every baby tantrum-like yelp heard over an unnecessary DJ in an orchestra-sized wiener Rock band, there was a growl and a shriek and a solo with blast beats and raw brutality ready to destroy in the underground. I had to keep reminding myself of that revelation as I listened to IN A TESTUBE.

This music sounds like the kind of Rock that professional wrestlers use as their intro music in the WWE. It's Nu Metal, which isn't really Metal at all but Hard Rock with corporate branding. I guess folks need to sell things or whatever, it's how the economy works and people assure me that's a good thing. Anyway this is tangential nonsense, what I'm saying here is that this is not the sound of the beast. It's not the God's Rock'n'Roll, in fact it's not even for the gods. It's for God. That's right, the label that this band is on, New Dream Records describe themselves as being "Christ-Centric." If you're wondering if this gets brutal or evil at all, there's your answer.

This is your typical Nu Metal fare (the band list themselves as being 'Alt Metal' but come on...), a lot of soft singing with forced rasping parts where they raise their voice just not enough to actually believe there's any conviction in what is being said. There are rhythmic beats that are catchy enough but lack all the intensity and intricacy of extreme metal. I don't hate Nu Metal, it just gives the impression of being a very watered down version of what I actually enjoy. I might be the wrong guy for judging this because I'm just not fond of several Soft Rock elements. If you like gentle crooning mixed in with standard Rock riffs then you will find a veritable cornucopia of mediocrity here to enjoy. Dads deserve to Rock too.

The positive in all of this I guess would be the message of the music? It's kind of uplifting and stuff. At one point there's a song where the lead singer whispers something to the effect of "Hey I like you just the way you are." Just kidding, positive music sucks. Ok, let's look deeper. Let's say you're a wiener-y kid at some kind of God Camp and good music is outlawed and you stumble on to this because it's lame and therefore allowed. You listen to it, and you hear the beginning elements of actual Metal. You enjoy it. You decide to dig into this and find other heavier bands, eventually following the trail until you get to actual good Metal. The possibility for this to maybe serve as training wheels for extreme metal is about the one redeeming quality I can think of. See? It's not so hard.

So let's review (The review?). This is middle-of-the-road Nu Metal that could have easily come out in the early 2000's and would be indistinguishable from other bands in the sound at the time. This of course, is totally unlike all the extreme Metal bands out there now who want to sound like their album was produced in a sewer during 1988. The musicianship is functional but doesn't push any limits. The fourth song "Hey Lilly" and fifth song "CLOC" had some lead work in them. In the song "Digital Eyes" there's a part where you hear some kind of wind instrument, which is kind of interesting. The rest of the album is just interchangeable generic soft Hard Rock. There's no murder, no carnage, no Devil, no space aliens or robots enslaving humanity, no end of the world apocalyptic genocide scenarios. From what I could make out (and I did try to find the lyrics, this is a hard band to find stuff on) there were a lot of songs about feelings and flying or being lifted up, also some kind of relationship stuff. I'm sure there were some relevant or interesting songs about society and issues judging from the album title, but honestly I just couldn't stay interested. This was one of those albums where I had to immediately cleanse the palate with after sessions of listening. If you want something that will make you excited to not listen to it, get "Immigration Anthems".