Album Review: The New Game by Mudvayne

After toning down the Slipknot/Mushroomhead theatrics for 2005's Lost and Found, Mudvayne vocalist Chad Gray recorded an album with modern metal (almost) "supergroup" Hellyeah. The latter outfit's predilection for basic, rib-cracking hard rock pops up occasionally throughout 2008's The New Game like a gin blossom, interrupting sonic blasts of math-tinged nu metal with furious Motörhead-meets-Alice in Chains mayhem. The problem is, Mudvayne's own predilection for predictable loud/soft/loud set pieces, forgettable melodies, and over-reliance on words like "sorrow," "rage," "abused," "disease," "nightmares," and "beatings" keeps things from ever leaving the tarmac.

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Review Summary: Unless this album is just an anomaly and not a harbinger of things to come, 'The New Game' signifies Mudvayne's transition from a renowned metal act to their inevitable fade into obscurity.If there's any record that damns Mudvayne to swim amongst the cesspool of the genre's rejects, The New Game is it. It's nearly impossible to fathom that a band who pushed the envelope at the start of this decade with its immensely technical, borderline schizophrenic major-label debut L.D. 50 and blossomed to a melodic juggernaut with 2002's The End of All Things to Come can deliver such an abysmal mess of a record.

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