P.M.T. – Acupuncture For The Soul

This first UK release of Swiss metal outfit P.M.T.‘s ‘s second album, originally released in 2004 across the rest of Europe, shows exactly why the band’s fan base has been going from strength to strength. Rocking like a arse-kicking jailbird who’s just broken out of San Quentin prison, they are just what the metal market ordered.

Their music is heavy enough to please hardcore metal fans, but they’re not afraid to show a more commercial edge either – a fact that’s not gone unrecognised by Levi’s Jeans who once used one of the band’s early songs, Sandwich Boom, for a television advert campaign in Europe.

The British release of Acupuncture For The Soul has been enhanced with treats such as interviews and videos, and is one of those albums that you either stumble upon by sheer chance or are pleasantly surprised by a friend’s recommendation. It’s a blood-soaked rampage of chunky, funk-filled riffs and supercharged metal madness. It’s a monstrous tour-de-force with enough unstoppable stamina to give Kelly Holmes a run for her money, and enough strength to give some powerful jabs to an ultimate fighting champion.

The blistering riffs are ripped out like flesh from rotten carcasses – rather than being chewed and spat out though, they become meatier as the album progresses. Think Rob Zombie and Machine Head by the way of Korn and Linkin Park. The Prodigy inspired industrial metal of Frigo is monstrously delightful, unsurprisingly considering that the band once covered Liam Howlett and company’s Breathe on a previous EP.

Compost and Taste In Camouflage have a nu-metal sound but are more bold and bearable than most of the songs from that thankfully short-lived genre of the late ’90s. Whether anyone took the vanity and crassness of nu-metal seriously is debatable, but P.M.T. are obviously influenced by it – luckily, they’re skilful enough to get away with it.

Thumbsucking is a milkshake blender of bone-breaking sounds that are sharp enough to lacerations on anything that touches it. Cute And Fluffy is hardly that – the drumming is tremendous, keeping the rhythm section in fine shape.

Acupuncture For The Soul is not an album that will be suited to all metal fans’ tastes, but it is in an album that will, or at least should, be greeted with rejoicing by a legion of nu-metal and industrial metal fans. If you’ve become disillusioned with Marilyn Manson‘s more commercial direction, take a peek at P.M.T.’s second album. Like me, you may be pleasantly surprised.