While tribute bands are a way of life in the elevator music world, when a band devotes their entire album to cheap rip-offs, it is never good. That is what Systematic has done with, "Pleasure to Burn," their new CD featuring stolen Metallica riffs and poorly written lyrics.
The music on the CD would be tolerable if it weren't something that every hard rock band has already written and discarded later in their careers for better material. Even though this is the band's second album, it sounds suspiciously like a freshman attempt.
Not surprisingly, the best song on the album is the first single. "Leaving only Scars" is a decent and original song about despair with suicidal tones. It combines tragic lyrics with a rocking background and sing-along chorus.
The one nice thing about this album is that there is a minimal amount of screeching and rapping. It attempts to get back at rock's roots, before the age of the DJ and processed sound.
Unfortunately, each song sounds just like the one before. The lyrics aren't in themselves poor; they are just copies. Singer Tim Narducci seems to be constantly channeling James Hetfield of Metallica with limited success.
Perhaps some more time out as a group will give these guys the opportunity to write something original. Until then, just listen to any rock recording from the last 20 years to wait out the return of this copy-cat group.
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Annemarie Moody is an entertainment writer for the Web Devil. Reach her at annemarie.moody@asu.edu.
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out of four
