UIGG - To Punish and Enslave

UIGG “To Punish and Enslave”, 2008

A band with an unpronouncable name is always going to have things working against them. Uigg’s logo looks a little like the symbol Prince used during his nameless years.  UIGG’s symetrical logo can be copied but it’s hard to imagine kids drawing their logo on their schoolbooks and bags.
The band have put their extended artwork and album lyrics on a blog instead of the CD sleeve. Their reasoning was they had too many ideas to fit on paper but this reeks of laziness.  The band is shitting on the people who actually buy CD’s that can’t be bothered with the net.   Believe me, these people do exist, even though they likely won’t read this review.  The sleeve is devoted to thanklists.  Among the list of names each band member separately thanks are members of the band and their cat.  It would have made more sense to put the thanklist where it can be edited as more names come to mind and have the lyrics in a portable format.
 
On their myspace site, Uigg  put themselves in the death, black and thrash metal genres.  The secong song “One Shall Stand, One Shall Fall” has the drummer winning the race to end of the song.  The vocalist and guitarists struggle to catch up and the song suffers as a result. Throughout the album the vocals are either resemble battery acid gargling Danii Filth(mostly with out the little girl shrieks) or  take the Scooby Doo route, which is good when the band slow down and play to their strengths.  “Sadistic Reprisal” demonstrates this bands potentential when they do realize the limits of their capabilities.  In the one song the band combine traditional, death and black metal together and there is an annoying moment where the blastbeat button has been accidentally pressed.  “Carthasis” and “Slamhog” take the death metal tardis back to 80’s thrash but the desire to do to much on the drummer’s part pours rotten milk into the songs.  The band too often act on their urge to punish the listener into knowing that they can play one more than type of metal and the songs suffer as a result and Uigg sound unsure of their identity rather than  a band capable of getting away with genuine transgenre behaviour.


2/5

The band have released another album since this review was written which can be heard on their facebook site.  What little I've listened to does sound better than this album.