After Taste – Hungry For Life Review
By Grymm
I’ll be the first to admit, right now, that I miss Type O Negative. Chances are that you do, too. When bassist/vocalist Peter Steele died in 2010, he and his merry cohorts of doom and lust left a massive, gaping hole in the world of metal that no one to this day could replace or replicate. That hasn’t stopped others from trying, however. After Taste, hailing from the Netherlands and featuring Dave Meester of God Dethroned on guitar and vocals, are the latest in a line of those who worship at the altar of Black and Neon Green. With their second album, Hungry for Life, these Dutch doom-peddlers are hoping you will give in to your carnal cravings.
On a couple of songs, they do the trick. “Morning XTC” gives off a Host-era Paradise Lost vibe, with its somewhat upbeat, danceable rhythms and simple-yet-catchy riffs. Elsewhere, “Mind Over Body” could slot itself alongside Katatonia’s Night is the New Day in both atmosphere and performance, but with Meester aiming for Peter Steele instead of Jonas Renkse vocally. Their influences are sound, and their passions are in the right places when it comes to capturing a particular snapshot of a lifestyle of non-stop partying, and the grotesque, inevitable come-down afterwards.
So why doesn’t this land as well as it should? In their one-sheet, they’re aiming for a sound that’s equal parts Type O Negative, Rammstein, and Alice in Chains with electronic and synthwave vibes. Instead, what this reminds me of are the Century Media bands of the late 90s and early 2000s that decided they weren’t metal anymore: Morgoth, Moonspell, and Tiamat. Not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but Hungry for Life sounds exactly like those aforementioned bands that were once inspirational, but had gone pedestrian with their sound, and this album captures that complacency a bit too well.
For example, opener “Sustain Me” crawls along at a snail’s pace and doesn’t move the needle much in terms of melody or memorability. “Lost at Sea” could have been a strong single, but it drags out for too long, all while being a scant four-and-a-half minutes, due to its repetitive nature. “Methmouth” and “Liquid Courage” both aim for lyrical grossness, especially in the former (“You’re lips are locked/’Round my member/Yet your breath still fills the air”), yet don’t really go anywhere of note musically to back it up. Granted, the last band to impress me going this direction lyrically and stylistically was Voices, but London was released a long time ago at this point, and that band backed it up with chilling performances, compelling songwriting, and tight musicianship, all things that Hungry for Life lacks.
I wanted to like Hungry for Life more than I did. It had all the ingredients in place to make for a fantastic album. Sadly, other than a scant few moments, it did little to quell my thirst for music in the vein of New York’s sorely missed goth overlords. I can only recommend this album for those that really, really miss Type of Negative, and even then, it’s not going to hit the same way as the originals did, and the end result yields an aggressively okay album. It’s a shame, because it feels like it could be a whole lot more.
Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Independent/Unsigned
Websites: Facebook1
Releases Worldwide: June 6th, 2025
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