Archives: Reviews

1 - I am God 2 - Fucking War 3 - What Lies Beneath... 4 - Hekseri

The same thoughts rise when I hear a “Viking Black Metal” band: what have the shrieking vocals to do with Viking warriors? And what about the corpsepaint? These elements mix as well with Norse mythology as with Buck Rogers science fiction. No really I cannot find the connection between electric guitars, high pitched screams and stage paint with traditional Scandinavian folk music. To be honest, the Aesir mythology themes in this Sykdom album are just present in the cover artwork (Thor’s hammer on front, Odin with his wolves and crows on the back). Musically we have 90’s so called Black Metal, with horrible weak shrieks instead of evil vocals, slow guitar riffs with a fuzzy distortion, vague melodies and among the simples keyboard uses you can imagine. Try to figure one riff and think that a single note is played over it, then another note comes in when the riff is repeated, that’s it. You get a dozen key strokes in a whole song (and they average 8-9 m minutes each!!). I am now recognizing some of the lyrics, despite the vocals have the same range of a midget with sore throat (hey, do you have that Herzog movie in mind: “Even Dwarves…”? Hmm, well probably those vocals were way more brutal), and guess what? They’re talking about SATAN!! There is a mjollnir on the cover and these guys are singing about a character of Hebrew mythoi! Whatever, I am just trying to find words to say that this album sucks. The keyboard use is worse than in a 80’s videogame, the guitar riffs have a faint melody and are repeated over and over with these great midget vocals on top. The melodies themselves also sometimes repeat from song to song with minimal variation. As a concept it sounds very weak, but as a Black Metal album it sounds totally awkward. Raises the same emotions as bad summer mix disco music. Too many electronics for my tastes, and even more so for dealing with historical and mythological themes. Useless. Ah even from my incomplete packaging I could understand the layout is sloppy as well, some of the runes are indistinct and blurred by wrong resolution, plus the spaces and lines are scattered without aim in the booklet. There is really little you could save here.

1 - Uniforms of Brutality 2 - Zombified by Propaganda 3 - From Cradle to Grave 4 - Our Tears 4 - Failure of God 6 - Day of Doom

The cover art on this album follows the art concept of many punk/crust bands, or the first Brutal Truth/Terrorizer album if you wish. It is a collage of human atrocities with a nazi flag, nuclear explosions, the picture of George W Bush, factories adorned in thick clouds of noxious fumes etc. The lyrics also follow this concept of denounce towards the lying system, so we can say here we are a bit back to the roots of the genre, when death and grind were still less defined. I am also 100% I remember the name of Max Varani (the singer) from some demo or 7” I got many years ago, the guys don’t look like kids, it’s possible this is a rather old band or at least that some of the members are not new to this scene. The music too, isn’t well defined either, it sounds like fast Death Metal with some short blasts and a guttural gowl that reminds me a bit of Frank Mullen in “Breeding the Spawn” (same recording quality too ah!). The music also is brutal for sure but not sounding modern at all: the riffs are simple and straight, very fast with some bridges accented by a battering almost tribal drumming. Memories of older cross-90’s bands abound here, maybe Prophecy of Doom among the others, but not just that one. There are also some solos and slower grinding parts, but the feeling you get is more of minimalist, grievous core bands like Man is the Bastard than some sad English metal. All in all this is nicely stripped of superfluous melodies and has a good hold in old school grind/metal. 100% Metal but with a totally grind approach and mentality. Interesting. Something better could have been achieved with the cover, the pictures are totally asymmetric and the shading effects are a bit too clear, and a 10 minute running time make me think this is just a demo and not a full or an Ep, but other than that it’s cool to hear abdns like this exist in my country. Go filth go!

1 - Sindarilla 2 - The Spirit Tower 3 - In the Shadows of Stigma 4 - An Odour of Osirian Bloom 5 - Misery Tree 6 - By the Vampire Still 7 - The End of Subject 8 - Her Heart Pounds - 7 to Nightfall

First off this band has been catalogued as death/black but you know, that’s because the vocals sometimes turn into screaming but the basics of dismal Black Metal are not explored here at all. Fairytale Abuse (oh shit, what a horrible name for a band) play some kind of metal with very wide textures, lots of organ like keyboards, flowing melodies and a thick In Flames/Third and the Mortal vibe. It is the kind of let’s call it death metal for lack of a better definition, with guttural growls and some screaming but more than anything else a shitload of sing along melodies. In my opinion, there is just too much sauce for too little pasta (aha), the guitarwork is minimal, just a few chugs, but everything is spiced with two fucking tons of glossy melodies. GAIA’S PENDULUM might be terrible, but their music make some sense as a background for having a gothic chick laid. This band however is much worse. The incoherent use of melodic bridges and growling sing along tunes is just a bit too much to bear. If the trick is embedding the melody within the song structures, here we have the exact opposite, it’s like putting lemon on the fish to hide the fact it’s getting old and rancid (hey sorry, I’m writing from the seaside ah ah. The cover art depicts a vampire with black lipstick with a castle in the background, and here, I am not wasting any words. You know what I am about so say. Terrible melodic death metal, completely derivative and lacking the coherence and strength of the earlier attempts at this genre. I was not a fan at all of this genre at the beginning, but the copycats are even worse, if possible. Horrendous.

1 - In the Storm's Winds 2 - Glorification 3 - Immortal Existence 4 - Next to the Throne of Chaos 5 - Into the Damned Soul's Limbo 6 - Ancient Spirits in the Mist Dwell 7 - Embraced by the Darkness 8 - Where the Moon Lies in Silence 9 - Temple of the Ever Dark 10 - Lord of Soul's Rebellion

This album is complete shit, no hope whatsoever to pick anything good in here, I always strive to make constructive, detailed reviews but band like this challenge any good intentions. Fundamentally, this is clichéd, derivative, 67th generation black metal with no ideas, some melodic keyboards, popeye vocals, constantly clichéd song titles about wolves, darkness and satanic glory, a load of mellow solos, and a completely nonsense recording. The guitars are fuzzy and almost incomprehensible, but that might make sense IF all the mix was similarly recorded in a rough way. But the drums, which of course are casual and not fast at all, have a terribly mechanical triggered sound, and are naturally recorded so high you basically just get to hear them and the atrocious old woman in the laundry vocals only. This music gives the same enthusiasm and feeling of depressive sinfulness of a 80-years old grandmother ordering ham at the supermarket for the supper. This is a genre that has no reason to exist, it is the proof that people today completely misinterpreted the original concept of black metal. This unbearable band took all the superfluous bollocks in modern black metal and made an album ONLY with that. Nothing good to day, we’re at the bottom of my scale together with traditional metal and modern Scandinavian thrash. Absolutely to avoid.

1 - Awake in Black 2 - Shattered Salvation 3 - The Last Breath Before I Die 4 - Forever Never 5 - Light in My Eyes 6 - Santo Grial 7 - Even Darkness 8 - A Moment for My Memory 9 - The Light of Redemption (MIsery) 10 - Midnight Meeting 11 - Garden of Delights

I am not an incredible connoisseur of gothic metal music, but I wonder why they’ve said this album is original. The melodies contained here follow strict clichés that tend to repeat even within the album itself. Each song has a slow, moody part with deep vocals a la Type ‘0’ Negative, bombastic metal melodies and big keyboards, just arranged in a different order. I think that band called 69 Eyes perfectly fits as a comparison. Not only this band is identical but even repeats the same concept from song to song. Not to say this music would not be perfect for a background on a gothic metal pub, but this music really sounds just like gimmick, no creative effort involved. Take the same elements, same vocal lines, same riffs and arrange to taste. How much does it takes to create a song once you got the main melody in your head? Don’t be swayed, the Metal element in Gothic Metal here starts and ends with some electric guitar harmonics: mostly we’re talking about oniric choruses, synths used to simulate acoustic guitars, brass percussions, and a bunch of orchestral elements. The vocals are able to switch from good deep growls to Pete Steele laments, and the best thing I can say about the whole is “thanks god, there are no shrieking witch screams”, I could not have stand them. Regarding lyrics and packaging I have not much to tell, this came on cardboard sleeve (and it took me 10 minutes to pull off the disc from the sheath since the sleeve was too narrow), but I still wonder, how comes the cover artwork is green if the album is called “Scarlet Melodies”? No bad feeling, this album fits any gothic fan expectations probably, but this not the zine for this kind of stuff. I think the problem of this album stands in its very concept, it’s the music genre itself that sucks, starting from this point, everything follows. Best moment is the final instrumental track, at least it is no metal. Worse might be “Midnight Meeting” where vampires lurk in with their ugly heads.

1 - Se Tu Mismo 2 - Olvidado por Dios 3 - Thrash Metal 4 - Hijo de la Patria 5 - Subversivos Espirituales 6 - Ebria Confesion 7 - Retorno al Utero (Muerte) 8 - The Hate Song 9 - Countess Bathory (Venom cover) 10 - Bautizados en Rencor (version 2005) 11 - Open Wound (version 2005)

Like I said in the previous review regarding Czech Mortifilia, sometimes the combination of subtle melodies embedded within the riffs of a Death Metal album could work. Sometimes however they do not, especially when broad, fat, baroque keyboards are overwhelming the wholeness of the songs. And that’s the case with the opening song on this “Subversivos Espirituales”, if you took out all instruments and leave just the keyboards, this could work as a jingle for a spot of a soap on a national TV channel. But things just don’t end here as the second song is already a bit different, made of some kind of washed down thrash riffs with a palm muting idea that repeats itself from start to end. The rest of the songs luckily discard the Cradle of Filth-like keyboard incept in favour of more traditional thrash metal with lowecase t and m, completely devoid of punch and aggressive force. The problem with this band is structural, and not viable to any recording or songwriting efforts. This music is just so completely average when aggressive, and so sugar coated when more melodic it’s read hard to stand it to the end. Some keyboards happen again once in a while, just to render the whole effect even more mellow. Some Iron Maiden-esque melodic rides also appear and then amplified by bold symphonic variations and that’s not a very good signal. While more competent in songwriting than a band like Morbid Sacrifice, this band succeeds in mixing two horrible genres like gothic/melodic metal and thrash in a blood chilling way, only the vocals are deep, crisp and good enough to stand out of the tragic mix. Definitely something I’d like to forget.