[In most cases below: their spelling, our emphasis]

MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL July 2008 —

“I sure am glad they assigned me this record to review, ’cause I think the lyrical content would be lost on most other reviewers. Well, over half of their songs are Dungeons and Dragons references. Possibly even more, ’cause it’s very apparent that these guys are way more advanced than I in the role-playing realm. A lot of their subject matter went totally over my head. But it’s not exclusively a D ‘n’ D band — they also have songs about vampires and circle pits. I should also mention that this is a keyboard-driven trash band from Baltimore. So, in the right setting, they could create a gnarly circle pit. Still, the guys are dorks. Serious dorks. The kind of dorks that would plan their tour so that they could be in San Diego for Comic-Con. I could compare they guys to STRIPMALL SEIZURES but without the drug-addled insanity, and instead, an overcaffeinated Mountain Dew freak-out. I can even see a slight DEAD KENNEDYS influence, even though they don’t sound anything like them. Musically, these guys are pretty average, but they were able to put keyboards into a trash band without sounding really horrible. Which is no easy feat, my friends. All in all, I liked the record, and I bet they put on a killer live show. (FS)”

METAL TEAM UK Feb 2009 —

“To coin a very much overused phrase, it takes all types to make the metal world revolve, including the strange, the bizarre, the peculiar and the ones that blatantly warrant a much earned “What…tha-fuck?!?” This rabble of Baltimoreans is not only made up of D&D geeks, but claim to be all about the knowledge-seeking academia (hmm). On the whole, I’m not really one to pay close scrutiny to lyrical themes, but somehow this idea doesn’t really seem fitting with their sound. Swarm, Kobold, Swarm gives a whole other meaning to the word silliness. Imagine the outcome if a band like Municipal Waste were locked in a studio with bucolic balm-pots Korpiklaani, with a weekend supply of beer (yes, that would be a lot!) and some shoddy instruments to play. On one hand, it seems like such a logical pairing; two fun styles of music fused together…but on the other hand, very disparate sounds…

Perhaps this proves the theory that two positives do in fact make a negative can be applied to music as much as physics. While on their own, beer bongs and chucking beach balls around to the ‘Waste is a great laugh, or dancing a folksy jig while being drenched in a shower of beer a huge amount of fun, when brought together it just becomes a little too chaotic. The styles don’t mesh together all that well, and besides, there are so few styles of music that can get away with such rawness, so why spoil it with fluffed-up instruments? I mean, it would be like a punk band teaming up with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. It doesn’t make much sense…

And then somewhere down the line, around the third or fourth listen, it dawns on me that, rather like Sideshow Bob after treating his mortal enemy to a final HMS Pinafore medley, I have grown accustomed to their sound…To the energetic, hyper-harmonies of ‘Super Skunk’, and the beleaguered buzzing of ‘Kobold Swarm’. To the manic jazz-improv infused ‘Berzerker’, and to the funky, punky ‘Make It Today’ with it’s catchy clap-along rhythms played out in frantic double time….and especially to the ‘Happy Little Boozer’ mimicry of ‘Tiger in an Ascot’. There is something rather likeable about this lot, whether it’s their raw energy or the sheer fun factor of it all. It’s completely bonkers, and it is incredibly chaotic…but it’s all a good laff (sic)! Self-proclaimed intellectualists they may be, but refreshingly they are not projecting it in a pompous and condescending way. As a fleeting MySpace visit informs me, they haven’t got much of a clue what they are doing, but they are having fun! Right on!”

Lords of Metal

Wilmar: I can see it all before my inner eye. Horst is sitting at the kitchen table supported by his wife and those who want to help him sort through the mailbag and decide who will review what CD. Then this hideous CD by Perverse Osmosis appears, slides into the CD-player to check what kind of style it is. The first tones of ‘Planet Of The Vampires’ rolls out of the speakers and literally everyone dies laughing.

“Who will review this junk?” Horst wonders openly. A whole bunch of reviewers parades through the kitchen. “Evil Dr Smit”, somebody shouts. “No, Bas has a bit of a stomach problem, it should be someone else.” “Nima!” another one suggests. “Nima is over his quota, I think I know someone”, grins Horst while his lips curl into this evil smile. “We send this to Wilmar, he is in bed with the flu, and this could stimulate his glands”.

And so it was done, and thanks to the CD of Perverse Osmosis I could add four more sick days to my account. I’m sorry, but are they taking this serious? I cannot imagine. ‘Swarm Kobold Swarm’ sounds like a rehearsal tape that we made twenty years ago on second rate cassette recorders with two microphones, so we could hear at home that the guitarist still has his stack cranked up too loud. And then they dare speak of an engineer and a mastering process…

Then there is this handwritten note with overdrawn logo beneath it. The band tells us the following: Please be well, battle hard and of course eat a balanced breakfast. The first thing didn’t succeed thanks to the flu, the second thing is an acknowledgement and the third will not happen due to the ‘music’ which has a reversed peristaltic effect on my digestive system… Really, I never heard anything worse than this. January isn’t even over and I will swear that this is the worst 2009 has to offer.

Only for people who are tone-deaf, sadomasochistic or so damn rich that they don’t know what to do with their money anyway.

Rating: 1/100 (details)