Desekrator – Metal for Demons – 2/5
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Formed as a supergroup of a variety of black metal artists, including infernus and tormentor of Gorgoroth fame, and the vocalist for Enslaved, they came together with the intention of having a good time and producing old school thrash. You have no idea how much I wanted to come out and say this is the best thing I’ve heard in a long time, but the simple fact is that it isn’t really very good.
In order to understand the sound, a little bit of background is required. The band was always intended as a joke, not to be taken seriously. Getting signed through their names rather than the demo produced, they immediately set out to the studio to get wasted on beer and whisky and party around with their instruments. The majority of the budget went on drink, and finding another studio after getting kicked out of their last, with the bare minimum used in the actual making of the album. This leads to a rather, shall we say ‘unique’ sound?
There can be no question this is thrash, but given the unusual manner in which this album was created, perhaps a slightly different method would be more suitable, commenting on the range of perceived sobriety present. Much of the sound is the more aggressive style, a sort of cross between the modern scene (Gama Bomb, Evile, etc) and the German aggression, (With the exception of the very black metal sounding track, where they possibly forgot what genre they were meant to be playing). Featuring clean singing, black metal growls and incomprehensible rambling, blast beats, guitars both in time with the rest, and in some cases appearing to be doing their own thing, and a bassist who seems to sometimes forget to play, the diversity in the album I suspect comes more from dumb luck than anything requiring more thought.
Songs such as the intro track, “Metal for Demons,” showcases a decent level of musicianship, and a slightly warbly drunk chorus, rather than sounding completely awful it makes you want to grab a pint and thump someone you don’t like with a big grin on your face. If the album was entirely like this, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but it’s the tracks like “Take us to the pub,” featuring what sounds like someone bashing empty whisky bottles, and the vocalist mumbling something incomprehensible that simply sounds atrocious. Even when considering the objectives of the band when producing the album, there can be no real excuse for tracks like this that simply do nothing in the way of making you feel interested. And yet, towards the end we find Bergen-Belzer Svinepelsen, where everything has been simplified, and the band – still clearly drunk, singing in Norwegian – succeeds in producing a catchy riff and an overall fun track.
The production is pretty awful as well, which doesn’t help. Not awful in the sense of black metal, where it yields a raw tone, but rather the levels of the instruments are all badly off. The bassist occasionally can’t be heard, the guitarist is often overtaken by the sound of the drummer, the vocalist overtakes everything else, where his apparent state becomes all too, well, apparent.
This is by no means a good album, yet still I would recommend it to any metal fan simply for its novelty purposes. The few good tracks bear listening to for a chuckle, and it’s a shame they didn’t take this project just a touch more seriously, and decided upon a cut off point for what was deemed acceptable. When you can no longer sing, or play your instrument in time, its time to call it quits.
Highlights: Metal For Demons, Texas Joe, Bergen-Belzer Svinepelsen
By T. Bawden
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