Save Me From Myself

I've come across a fair few bad albums in my time. There have been much publicised falls from grace (Metallica spring to mind...), good ideas executed badly (Pyramids debut, reviewed earlier by yours truly being a particularly good example), and of course, albums that were pretty much destined to be awful. And then there's Save Me From Myself, which may well be the worst collection of songs I've had the misfortune to come across. Excruciating, preachy lyrics set against ham-fisted nu-metal that would have looked out of date five years ago combine to create one of the most staggeringly gauche releases you're ever likely to hear. The first thing you'll notice here is at Head has literally one way of writing songs. He'll start out with an “atmospheric” sound effect, the laughable opening to Loyalty being my personal favorite, before going into a dull, thudding riff devoid of any melody bar some massively irritating “creepy” keyboard and guitar notes, topped with Head singing in his incredibly aggravating growly whisper of a voice. At this point we usually reach a “soaring” chorus. If you're lucky, you might get something approaching heaviness in a song, usually consisting of a rather tame breakdown with Head screaming feebly all over it. So, this merely seems like a parody of Korn so far, which I'm afraid on it's own wouldn't be quite enough to induce such anguish in this particular reviewer. As you may well be aware, Head left Korn a few years back in order to concentrate on music with a Christian message. Now, I have no problem with a musician choosing to sing about their views, regardless of whether I agree with them or not. What I do have a problem with, however, is straight-up preaching, and boy, does Head lay it on thick here. Pretty much every track consists of him telling you, the listener, not to do drugs, get an abortion, or various other things Head has deemed to be wrong. Now, once again, those messages in their own right aren't anything offensive (well, I'll leave you to debate the anti-abortion message in the comments thread.). What does border on the offensive, however is that Head seems to have something of a messiah complex. Interestingly for a man who left behind a lucrative career with his former band for his religion, there's little, if any, reference to the almighty here. No, this is the gospel according to Head, and when he starts to lament us giving kids “free will” on Loyalty, alarm bells start ringing. So, we've concluded the lyrics are tripe that borders on the genuinely offensive, but are they at least well-written offensive tripe? (say what you will about the likes of Arghoslent, at least they have a decent command of the English language). Well, as you may have guessed, it's all mawkish rhymes and hackneyed cliches, including some lines that are laugh-out-loud funny (“Don't lie, don't kill, it's making me ill” is an absolute peach). So, to conclude, Save Me From Myself fails as a collection of songs, and fails as a work with a positive message. If you are interested in hearing metal with a Christian message, then the likes of Mortification offer up music with quite a bit more substance. Some of you out there may argue that a cynical young black metal fan like me may not be the person most suited to reviewing this. But quite frankly, even the most die-hard of Korn fans will find this mediocre at best. I'll throw it a few points as after enough listens, it merely becomes massively bland rather than out-and-out horrific.