It's a strange coincidence that the last three CD's that I've reviewed have all been dark, scary vampire-core. Maybe the vampires themselves call this music undead-core or corpse-core. I think that Indian who I cut off on the onramp the other day put a spell on me and now I'm turning into a night-lurker myself. A skateboarder of the night! At least that's what I thought when I saw the picture of the band Eighteen Visions on the back of the CD.

After a few listens to Eighteen Vision's new
album Obsession I was relieved that it was not about bloodletting and so forth. The first two songs are pretty kick-ass but that's about it. The record opens with some hard-driving screamers, but after that it goes down hill faster than Meatloaf on a Luge. The rest of the album sounds like James Hetfield got together with the members of Three Days Grace and Smile Empty Soul just to fuck with my head all the more. (See the message board on Atreyu).

Singer James Hart does a good job of distributing blood-curdling screams on songs such as "Obsession" and "I Let Go" but on other songs the singing is pure corporate-rock posturing mixed with random, spastic, out-of-place screeching. It's as if the band put all their decent songs at the very first instead of
dispersing them throughout the entire album like any normal band would. Therefore the listener loses interest within the first half of the CD.
"Obsession" is released under Trustkill records; but if they don't put together a record that's alot more consistent than this they'll most likely wind up on Buzzkill Records