Published: March 14, 2014

Australian born Terry Vainoras has been contributing to the metal music industry since sometime around 1997 and has never looked back. He's been involved in quite a few bands that have spanned a large range of metal genres, from metalcore to gothic metal to grindcore to doom and death metal. It's obvious that he's proficient in the huge spectrum that the metal world has to offer and now he has branched out on his own with his solo project Subterranean Disposition, which was conceived in 2011. Terry released his project's debut self-titled album, and first ever release under this band name, via Hypnotic Dirge Records in 2012, how well does the material stack up?

Each track on Subterranean Disposition is exceedingly long winded, with the shortest song coming in at just under nine minutes and the longest exceeding fourteen minutes. This is another unfortunate case where the length of an album works against the artist in almost all regards and the listener will be in for an exceedingly drawn out portrayal of a collective of content that is comprised of the most dull and generic brand of doom riffs, tempos and beats that can be imagined; to the point that it's difficult to say much more about the record since it doesn't carry a lot of substance.

The album starts off promising enough with jungle sounds coupled with apes grunting and shrieking as they go into a frenzy while hollow guitar picking sets in for the appropriately titled "Between Apes and Angels". Musically this track has a Hooded Menace like quality that sucks the listener in at first, but even before this nearly nine minute escapade is done interest dwindles a bit. Attention spans will decline into a numbed sleep by the lack of velocity changes and the exorbitant use of guitar picking becomes tiresome. There will be a shocking awakening come the middle of "Seven Sisters of Sleep" when loud, abrupt palm muted riffs begin to chug behind blasts of distorted vocals that are only obscured due to the decibel meter on the microphone going straight to red; sadly even this heavy duty section is just lacking, the riff isn't even much of a riff rather than a chord strummed twice a few times, then the distortion pedal is kicked off and the same strumming continues in a less toned manner. The vocal track does its best to incorporate different styles, such as whispering, spoken word, clean singing and growls; this would help keep the vocals from becoming repetitive if it felt as though the weight was distributed evenly, rather than the bulk being growls. The drums rarely get a chance to accomplish anything moderately impressive as the stale tempo of the entire album only allows them the opportunity to cascade cymbal crashes, some bass kick use and filler toms and snares.

To put it bluntly and trying in vain of coming off too harsh, Subterranean Disposition is a complete trod that takes the long way through everything that makes doom metal what it is, but in the most boring way possible. There are few tempo changes, almost as if it were a challenge to add in none at all, that diversify the five tracks. The fact that the tracks themselves are so long would warrant the need for some type of change within them, however it's kept to the tried and true monotonous picking, gentle drumming and death metal growls. The only real good thing about this album are the intellectual lyrics that are quite interesting, however they're not worth fifty-five minutes of listening time.