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Tag: El Minotaur

El Minotaur-The Vernal Sequined Ox

elminotaurBand Name: El Minotaur
Album Name: The Vernal Sequined Ox
Best element: Not selling out
Genre: Metal
Website: http://www.morawk.com/em/em.htm
Label name: Generic Equivalent Records (http://www.boatsandstars.com/geneq)
Band e-mail: ElMinotaur@hotmail.com

El Minotaur means the absolute best. They are being themselves throughout this entire CD, sticking to their guns and not selling themselves out to become trendy and modern sounding. However, they very succinctly sum themselves up in the song “Jack A Dull Boy” when they say “take your calculated, over-thought, forced rhyme psuedo-poetry and burn it all/this time try to pick the words that mean the most to you and make you feel.”

That having been said, they have taken just about every lyrical cliché known to man and stretched them throughout a very difficult-to-get-into nine-track CD. The lyrics are full of things that the listener has heard so many times before that he or she cannot connect with the music on a lyrical level. Musically, each song is filled with early 80s throwback metal riffs and incoherent screaming, so unless the listener was a fan of 80s metal music, he or she cannot connect with the band musically either. When the vocalist is not screaming, he’s singing- but usually sounding whiny and off key. This, combined with the wailing guitar riffs and off-beat drums make this whole CD very painful to listen to.

How apt that they are on a record label named “Generic Equivalent“! While sticking to your guns is an admirable trait as a musician, it may be advisable for El Minotaur to take a bit of their own advice: While sticking with what feels right to them, they should come out with something more groundbreaking, instead of telling us what is felt by using the same boring analogies and sounds we’ve heard hundreds of times before.

-Andrea Goodwin

independentclauses@hotmail.com