Thursday, August 7, 2008

Elite and Empty Headed

V/A “Anti-Geldof Compilation” (Supernal)

I blogged about this one much earlier Although, it had to do more with the weird concept of “Weird” Al Kurtagic and Supernal Records. Now we’ll cover the music and expand upon the concepts and connections that some of these dodgy bands have. Strangely this release comes after the Accept tribute and the tribute to German National Socialist Black Mental ‘tards, Absurd. Oddly enough KFJC played this. Mostly because it was so “kvlt” or obscure? Who knows?

This sucker’s packed with 2 CDs worth of sounds that are:

"You will find 100% exclusive, never-heard-before tracks by twenty one Black Metal and Dark Ambient artists of proud European heritage from both sides of the Atlantic.” An interesting question appearing in the black-metal.co.uk forum asked about the "elite" nature of this release.

“How does he reconcile the simplistic musicianship of the majority of black metal bands with claims to its superiority as an underground musical artform?“
Necrosadistic via Necrosadistic Goat Torture (actually a pretty good band)

Even more of Kurtagic's strange pre-release babblings can be found here . Kurtagic has also reviewed his own releases on Metal-Archives, a tactic so low, that not even the worst “hard music” PR companies have even stooped to. It seems that Chumbawamba had addressed the issue in a more straight forward manner a mere year after the first Live Aid and likely got much more press from it.

OK, so...onto the music.

WINNERS: Uh, not many but THESYRE certain lays down some killer crusty BM, DARK AGES make nice "spooky organ music" featuring Roman of Drudkh,

MAYBE, COULD BE BETTER BUT... DER STURMER Make a good riff or 3, play with real drums but still can't get around their imperfect sounding German (ironic that). Would've been more impressed if their anti-John Lennon statement was an NSBM version of "Imagine" instead of merely sampling the song and following it with a gunshot. Something a shock jock did over 20 years ago. CONTRA IGNEM FATUUM - decent suicidal BM 'ala Xasthur. Not "martial sounding" as the Sound Project called it. BENIGHTED LEAMS - Kurtagic himself doing Godflesh-lite. Not bad. FOREFATHER - Cascading BM tremelo riffs by the Anglo-Saxon BM/kinda power metal band mix. File under: tried to like it. (Emphasis on "tried").


LOSERS:
EVERY band for participating in this waste of money and packaging. The cover artist, the label everyone who bought this and admired how "awesome" it is. If by awesome you mean pointless then yes. ASTROFEAS (Astrofeast? Astrofarts?) - lawn sprinkler drums + messy vocals. ASHES - "bedroom BM", miles of slow fuzzed out guitar coating a 10 minute sleeping pill. BEWITCHED (Chilé) “Spooky goth” vocals and wavering metalish guitars. Oh, so lame! DARKTHULE is a Greek one man, Black Metal recycling every Youtuber's "me playing Translyvanian Hunger" video. Nein! People like this should NEVER be given music equipment much less a German dictionary.


DEFIANCE is not the Bay Area thrash band or 2000s punk band. Instead, we it's some fat skinhead attempting to poop out a redwood forest of turds and some 2 fingered guitarist along with another pinging drum machine making er, "Bedroom Hatecore"? ETHERAL WOODS sound like "bedroom BM" with keyboards and a big, dopey chorus singing "Natural Selection". Hopefully “natural selection” will weed out these weak Sears catalog keyboard loving fools. They keys sounds about as “atmospheric” a Loverboy outtake. FANISK are Portland area dickwads armed with a grocery baggie of ultra thin tremolo riffs. The vocals shouted from different angles from under the kitchen sink. HAMMER - No, not as in "MC..." Whiny, outta breath vocals. In short a lame version of early 90’s emo mixed with crust punk AND generic ass BM tremelo picking. KENAZ - Sub-sub-sub-sub basement clang, clang, ADD level, zero production no talent CRAP. Kenaz is the rune for torch, someone should torch this band’s rehearsal space and all their recordings.

MORE LOSERS: STALAAG - Tortured cat & grandma noise dementia that some people love for some absurd reason. Fucked up-ness doesn’t = “cool” or even listenable. TANNGRISNIR Growl, growl, bore, bore, mangle riff, repeat 400x. THE WIZZARD - is straight up regular heavy metal? Starts good but oh, the vocals are dumb like every fucking band on every fucking TV report on “nazi hate rock”. ULFHETHNAR - More thin production and guitar levels and buried vocals. There couldbe drumming on here but it’s about as effective as a tambourine in a middle of monster truck race. The dude sounds like he’s about to choke. WHITE HUNTER - Slow grow, more tremolo riffs, ping & sputter cymbals that fade in and out. A poor attempt at the “claustrophobia” effect that Leviathan mastered. This vocalist sound utterly bored and uninterested. WOODS OF INFINITY - "Paedofilic metal"? with a slight but disjointed version of King Diamond en Svensk and slow BM riffs.

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