I'm not a fan of Devin Townsend, but I still usually find myself able to like his music a bit better than this. City was really, really tedious to get through. Not only is it almost unlistenable from a production standpoint (a common Devin problem worsened), but I also don't find many of the musical ideas to be involving at all.
The riffs mostly don't grab me, the drumming is pretty much just repetitive and bog standard. Forget fills and interesting changeups. This is Gene Hoglan doing some of the shoddiest work of his career. I've got to imagine that it's on purpose. The album is sort of like thrashy, grindy industrial - so they probably decided the drums should be robotic. But that's no excuse for a complete lack of engaging beats.
Another bad Devin Townsed habit rears it's head here. There are many simplistic and half baked attempts of some sort of melody peppered across the album, but they all fall flat in the extreme.
All there's left is sonically unappealing, horrifically undynamic robotic grinding that doesn't even sound impressively cold or machine like.
This album is giving me a headache and I hate it.
1/10, because I just can't listen to it anymore and I have to make sure I give it a lower score than whatever I gave Manowar.
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