Mind's Eye - Cut Snake Poetry (1999)

I had been putting this one off for a while, and now I have begun I am not sure why really.

This is a strange album, in the modern era we might call it hardcore speedmetal, but that still doesn't quite roll right to me. On "Cut Snake Poetry", Mind's eye is playing a kind of highspeed hybrid of "Reign in Blood" era Slayer and "Schitzophenic" era Sepultura in that they have that vile intensely angry speedmetal feel, but the vocals seem to be much more in the vein of skinhead Oi! music or English punk but with an Aussie flavour and far more aggression. The affect of this is a kind of crossover feel between very aggressive punk and serious metal, but that isn't to say that these guys can't throw down with the extreme metal bands. There is plenty of heavy shit going on here, it is just that I found the mix of styles initially to be a bit jarring, like watching Romper Stomper with the sound turned down and replaced by Slayer's punk covers album "Indisputed Attitude".

This album really has to be listened to loud to appreciate. Really fucking loud.


Not having the words in front of me I can't say for sure, but there seems to be an Oi! influence to the lyrical content too, with lines like "Fuck Right Off!","Ya don't have a fucking chance!", "Access Denied!" and other very much standardised skinhead and hardcore lyrics popping up all through the album. I am searching for the right words here and failing spectacularly, but it sounds to me like very urban and working class metal, with the sort of streetwise cred of bands like Suicidal Tendancies or early Anthrax.
My only memories of Mind's Eye is that they were a 5 piece and that they didn't do much for me, but this CD shows that much of what they were doing is actually pretty good and that they too were victims of the omnipresent mix problems. I never met the guys from this band and only ever seen them once live, I am not going to pretend to know a thing about them, so I will concemtrate on their album here.

The vocals are a bit like hitting a cricket ball with a baseball bat rather than a cricket bat, the inpact goes right up your arms. But after a while you get the feel of them and it starts to sound a bit more cool. There are a lot of vocals here, delivered in that punky way of saying as much as possible in the shortest possible time. An acquired taste to be sure, but to me they work with the vibe of the music well to create a very angry sounding album. Would Death Metal have suited better? Maybe. But there is a good array of vocal effects in play on "Cut Snake Poetry" keeping it interesting, and there is something cool about being able to make out the words.
The guitar work on this CD is a bit of a suprise, the more you listen the more there is to like. In between the speedthrash and fast changes there are clever moments of dynamics like the intelligent use of a phaser and an intense lead on the very angry "Spilling Liquid Anger". The entire song "Cut Snake Poetry" is a bit of a mystery package actually, with highly intelligent guitar work throughout. It has this sorta swingin' folky blues wailing at the beginning and it sounds so very cool, disolves into serious speed and back again - this time the bass goes all licky instead - and then just when I thought I had them pinned down I hear a passage of what can only be described as Black Metal riffing. A very good song for sure, and definately not where the guitar magic ends. Words fail me, get a copy for yourself.

The drums are in my opinion the finest contribution on this album, as they don't so much as play along as pulverize and smash their way through the 13 tracks of this CD. The drumwork on "Cut Snake Poetry" is hyperactive and full on, a lot of innocent drumsticks must have died in the making of this album. There is boundless energy being expelled here, and in amongst the intensity the drums could almost be called expressive, but only if the emotion being expressed is raw anger. Where do all these brilliant drummers come from, and way more inportantly, where do they disappear to?

On the whole, I thought this album was pretty good, but I think that a second CD by Mind's Eye would have been much better. I am not a huge fan of this sort of metal, having the same reservations about it that I had with Plague's first CD. But by the end of the third time through "Cut Snake Poetry" I was enjoying it a lot more than the first listen. I guess it is the type of CD that grows on you, like a flesh eating bacteria eating into your skin, and some albums you listen to once and never think about again, but this one I am sure I will be getting out again for a listen quite regularly.

Even if it is just to put me in the mood to watch Romper Stomper again.

Review by Jez.