Global Scum
Hell is Home

Hell is home for the global scum I suppose. Global Scum also happens to be the name of the one-man-band featuring Manuel Harlander, Hell is Home is his debut album where he does more or less everything. So this album happens to be the vision of this guy, and I happen to be a bit sceptical of one-man projects, as they tend to end up lacking in some way or another. This album has a good-looking colour scheme for its cover but the cover itself cannot be described as the most exciting I have seen in my years as a rock critic, and neither can the album.

Even with the friendliest of mind-sets I find this album to be quite unoriginal. Groovy death metal in the vein of plenty of other bands out there and perhaps I can mention a few like Sepultura, Illdisposed, Gojira, Prevail and many others. Band like Pantera and their peers can also be mentioned as similar to what you get to hear here. And I think you could claim that Harlander falls into the same trap as so many other one-man ideas do, there is no one to point out that their ideas don’t quite work due to the rist of being seen as plagiarising, unoriginal or many other things that can go wrong in the creation of an album. I think Harlander doesn’t quite find his own voice with this album but we easily hear what inspire him.

Likeable production I think, good and modern and along with the short playing time it has to be the best part of the album, the ten tracks play for about 36 minutes. And they are decent tracks; it is just that they lack the originality and freshness that the greatest album has to offer. I also find that the album is rather predictable and that I already know what is coming after I have heard the first few minutes of the album – that is not how I want a new album to be. I think that this probably would have been better if made by a band where Harlander could have had some feedback from someone else to make the best of his musical abilities that seems to good enough to make something really exciting.

Lots of groove and stuff, but very little originality and novelty – it might be decent enough for fans of the genre to like but I have heard this kind of music so many times and many times it has been done better or at least fresher than this album. It is an album that doesn’t really retain my interest the whole way, despite the short playing time. And in the end I find Hell is Home to be a pretty well made album but not really a very exciting one.

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