Every once in a while, I like to place incendiary comments on a Youtube video of a bad Deathcore or Metalcore band to see the idiocy laden reactions of their 16 year old fans. While I, the knowledgeable metalhead elitist with my musical facts and points make a valid statement, the kids in their turquoise jeans and their lip piercings simply barrage me with expletives. While it's fun to mess with them, I still get frustrated that I will never get through to them until their balls drop and they have their first taste of real metal, and maybe even then they'll grow up with their manginas, enjoying music by the likes of Whitechapel.

The Somatic Defilement is the debut of Whitechapel, a Deathcore band from Knoxville, Tennesee. It contains some elements of Slam Death Metal, and of course Deathcore. The Somatic Defilement is a concept album sung in first person from the point of view of Jack the Ripper. It's an interesting concept, one that a good Death Metal band could run with if they really used imaginative lyrics, but this band, and this album are really really bad.

After a brief and annoying intro, the title track makes its way into the picture, and truly shows why Deathcore and Whitechapel are so dreadful.

The Somatic Defilement was released 3 years ago, before bands like Winds of Plague began to attempt advancing Deathcore as a more technical genre. Unfortunately, Whitechapel do their best to create an album that would leave Deathcore haters like myself seething. They managed to make an album so boring, so pointlessly heavy, and so anti-technical it makes me sick to my stomach. The Somatic Defilement is the anti-thesis to progressiveness and technical songwriting. It is so breakdown heavy it makes even the most rundown dry Deathcore seem as well construed as Origin or Gorod's latest release. Whitechapel try their hand at an age old Death Metal intro, the first track entitled Necrotizing being just a few seconds of a Jeffrey Dahmer interview. I put on the album while my younger brother was playing Street Fighter 4. He defeated his foe and made a perfect allusion to exactly what Phil Bozeman's vocals sound like, starting with a lengthy growl to open the title track. He compared it to gargling toilet water as mouthwash, a hilarious and perfect comparison. My previous reflection that this album has elements of Slam Death Metal becomes noticeable upon the first and every riff on this album. Many of them are wet noodle tuned power chords layered over generic Deathcore drumming, very reminiscent of Slam, which was so much fun to discuss in the forum under the popular thread "Worst Death Metal You've Ever Heard."

If I could type what the guitars most sound like it would go like this: JUN JUN JUNJUNJUNJUNJUN JUN JUN-JUN JUN-JUN-JUN JUNNNN JUN JUN. Say that in your deepest voice impersonation and you've replicated the amazing (sarcastic) riffs of Whitechapel perfectly!!! In fact, the riffs are so stale and so boring that I'd go as far as naming Whitechapel the most overrated band in metal, given the massive hordes of teenagers and college students who worship this band and think that Whitechapel are heavy because they play detuned fecal metal.

It might just be that the most frustrating part about Whitechapel to me is the amount of kids that think Slayer aren't heavy because they're old and their vocals aren't harsh. This being said, listening to the debut of Whitechapel didn't improve my distaste for the band, their fans, or the genre...