Black Tusk – Taste The Sin

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Anytime a record label spoils us as listeners with too much quality music, anything less than greatness feels like a slap in the face. As such, whenever Relapse Records, a label which has spent the better part of a decade serving as a flagship for forward-thinking metal, unleashes mediocrity, the metal world collectively scratches its head. They’ve had some misses before – Man Must Die, Kingdom of Sorrow, Dying Fetus – but Taste The Sin, the newest slab of southern-fried stoner metal from Savannah, Georgia natives Black Tusk, is uniquely disappointing in its drabness because it was supposed to be good. Black Tusk is actually a phenomenal live act, and at the 2010 Scion Rock Fest in Columbus, Ohio, they brought a perfect mix of intensity and fun to the stage. On record, however, it just doesn’t translate. Despite playing in a genre built on nothing more and nothing less than knowing one’s way around a great riff, Black Tusk brings none to the table. Music like this should cause one’s head to bang, but there’s something wholly passive about the whole record. Songs lazily drift into one another, and the myriad good ideas that yearn to be put into a better context are lost in the ether of musical confusion. The best moments recall Weedeater and EyeHateGod, but the band simply seems to lack the keen ear for songwriting that those bands possess. Still, optimistm dictactes Black Tusk may well have a great album in them, one that successfully channels the energy of their live shows onto an hour-long recording, but Taste The Sin isn’t it.

Written by Brad Sanders
More: 2010, Albums, Quick.Play Reviews, Stoner, Black Tusk