★☆☆☆ What is this, Deafheaven?

★☆☆☆ This album feels like an unholy blend of every major nu-metal band’s example of their One Album After Their Last Good One.

★☆☆☆ This self-described “black metal meets negro spirituals” feels like a double case of smarmy cultural appropriation. At least it’s unusual.

★☆☆☆ Limp Bizkit meets RATM meets Butcher Babies meets Soulfly meets Body Count with just a hint of past-their-prime Ministry. In other words: a hot mess.

★☆☆☆ The good news is that this is often a spot-on homage to Death (specifically, the classic album “Spiritual Healing”). And when Gruesome is in this Tribute Mode (as they largely were on their debut album “Savage Land,” you had a sense of extrapolation into something both old and new. The bad news is that, more often than not, the music on this new album feels like the band simply took Spiritual Healing sheet music, put it in a shredder, taped the scraps back together, traveled from Orlando to Tampa (and from 2018 to 1989), found Scott Burns, and got him to record it.

★☆☆☆ This album of groove metal feels at least 15 years too late. Sure, the production is crisp, and there are some decent licks scattered about. And I do like the Kenny Wayne Shepard and Offspring covers. But even with all those wins, this album is chronically self-serious, dispassionate, and ultimately joyless.

★☆☆☆ Everything goes well until the vocals start; the wah-wah just seals the nu-metal-core deal. In the album’s defense, there are some meaty riffs undergirding the whole affair. Unfortunately, they’re deployed in the service of an outmoded and adolescent sensibility. What a waste.

★☆☆☆ Light The Torch (née Devil You Know) take a giant step toward metalcore mediocrity with this, ostensibly now just The Howard Jones Show. There’s almost no perceptible energy on this album whatsoever, and every single three-minute song is probably at least a minute too long.

★☆☆☆ I’ll always have a love for Ministry, but I don’t hear a compelling reason on this album for them to come out of retirement. Very dated industrial, with the musicianship shoved back behind the thoroughly predictable sound bites from hated politicians. Sludgier than the Mike Scaccia-era Ministry that we loved so much.

★☆☆☆ I swear to god, when this album started I thought at first that I’d popped on a Primus album. Unfortunately, that’s probably the listening high point of the debut album from this high-concept stoner band. I’m hardpressed to think of another supergroup as intent on casting its constituent pieces in a worse light.