Cost: $2.00
Distro/mailorder descriptions and the Gonkulator connection always made me curious about this CD. When I finally saw the band photos and songtitles online, it was obvious they weren't a terribly serious band, and I assumed they'd just be a black metal parody with either ultra generic or ultra exaggerated music. I saw some places give it a thrash descriptor, which I didn't take particularly seriously.
Let's not beat around the bush--the vocals here are crap. They're heavily processed (pitch shifted higher plus reverb, I think?) They're a cross between cartoon imp and robotic voice changer, and since they're a weird style that doesn't really fit the music, they don't even have the comedic value that ridiculous vocals typically would. The shame is, aside from the vox, the music seems like a fairly decent mix of black metal and thrash, which really surprised me. At its best it's similar to a far more simplified, speedier take on Ritual's Soldiers Under Satan's Command album, although they unfortunately throw in some pointless blastbeat sections. The main riff of "Battle Scars" also reminds me of the chorus riff to Sodom's "Witching Metal," though keep in mind I'm just recording my immediate thoughts as I listen, and this shouldn't seriously be compared to the greatness of early Sodom. The Conan album intro and some of the acoustic guitar parts used to open songs are fine, but they can go overboard with the cheesiness (though given the look of the CD, what else would you really expect?) There's an untitled Halloween theme-ish interlude that sounds like it was cobbled together from a Halloween sound effects CD, and the "Praise Be Thy Goat" outro is silly mock ritual/incantation stuff (though they would have been better off letting the chick talking do the main vocals!). Ultimately, the inept vocals completely neutralize anything positive about the disc.
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