Audiotopsy – “Natural Causes” [Album Review]

Back in the early part of this decade, there was a plethora of bands emerging in the wake of the success of Iowa metal titans Slipknot. One of those bands, Mudvayne, as well as giving the whole masked look a bit of a twist, delivered an equally interesting twist on the nu-metal genre. A rollercoaster career after that saw the band disappear into relative obscurity with a number of members going on to join Hellyeah. Well, with half the line-up disappearing, the remaining members regrouped to form Audiotopsy and you can hear the first fruits of that partnership on their debut album Natural Causes.

Fronted by Skrape (another one of those US metal bands who never really broke out of the underground scene) vocalist Billy Keaton, Audiotopsy are basically everything you’d expect them to be. Offering up a similar pounding alt-metal style heard in bands like Godsmack and Hellyeah, opener “Headstrong” and “Disguise Your Devils” are run-of-the-mill fist-pumping slabs of alt-metal full of testosterone and cheap beer!

“Distorted”, on the other hand, is a pounding, aggressive slice of angsty, angry, frustrated metal. It’s all fairly generic stuff that we see padding out middle-of-the-day festival slots every year. It’s not that Audiotopsy are a bad band, more so that they’re just very generic with tracks like “LYLAB” (or “Love You Like A Bitch” to give it its full title) doing nothing to quash opinions that American heavy metal is male-dominated, knuckle-headed dirge.

Natural Causes is a solid if uninspiring slice of American alt-metal that nestles its way in comfortably alongside bands like Five Finger Death Punch, Mudvayne, Hellyeah and the rest of that whole genre. It’s not a game-changer by any means, but if you’re into thumping alt-metal, Natural Causes is no better or worse than anything else that you’ll have heard from this genre.

Track Listing:

01. Headshot
02. All We Know
03. LYLAB
04. The Calling
05. H2O (Interlude)
06. Swim
07. Disguise Your Devils
08. Burn The Sky
09. Distorted
10. Darken The Rainbow
11. Frozen Scars
12. Natural Causes (Outro)

Run Time: 49:02
Release Date: October 2, 2015

Check out the song “Headshot” here.