Review Numero Dos

This is the second review I'm putting up on here. It's also on metal-archives, and on facebook, cause...well, I want people to read my crap. It also gives the blog some content, I suppose. I'm not going to be posting only reviews on here, but for now all I've been doing recently is reviewing music, so that's all you're gonna be seeing from be for the time being.

NEKRO KHAOS - RITES OF THE BLACK MASS (2/100)

If there’s one thing I hate in my beloved genre of black metal, it’s the words that mock the black metal clichés. Anybody who’s visited a metal forum for more than 5 minutes can pretty much name all of them off by heart: “tr00” “kvlt” “nekro” “grim” and so forth. I hate the words, I hate anybody that uses them in jest (when they’re used in jokes it’s NEVER funny, by the way) and I want anybody who utters them to die a horrible violent death, or at the very least have their vocal chords ripped out. So you can imagine I’m not exactly given a good first impression by a band named Nekro Khaos, complete with intentional misspellings. Seriously, dude, there weren’t any fucking Darkthrone or Immortal song titles you could have used? That’s not even the worst part though. This guy’s “stage name” so to say, is “Death4u”.

Yes, you heard me correctly. Death4u. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Why in the sweet unholy mother of FUCK would anybody who’s trying to seriously start a band think that would be a GOOD idea? Dear god, the reason the assholes that dismiss the black metal scene because they think it’s a joke are never going to go away because we’ve got people like THIS clown running around, spreading every single stereotype about black metal like it’s the bubonic plague. And, of course, what kind of music do we get from a black metal band that is stereotypical to the logical extreme in its image? Why, a shitty, stereotypical Darkthrone clone, of course! Although, I hesitate to call this a “clone”, because that would mean that the band bears close resemblance to Darkthrone, which doesn’t really work because Darkthrone actually sounds good.

Being a shameless clone of Darkthrone, we can obviously expect this to have bad production. However, this isn’t even bad in the “raw and ugly as fuck” way, this is just flat-out bad. Now, usually the production isn’t that big of a deal to me, but when it’s as awful as it is in Rites of the Black Mass it deserves a mention. The drums are nearly inaudible. Yes, the drums. I don’t know how he managed to make the DRUMS inaudible, but he did. The vocals are pretty far back in the mix too, which means that the riffs here take the front seat. And man, talk about the lamest riffs I’ve ever heard in black metal. The guitar tone is lame by alternative rock standards and lacks any real crunch or power in it, and it doesn’t help that some of the riffs don’t even sound like black metal at all. Just listen to “Hail Sathanas”! it sounds like a fucking southern rock tune with some black metal screeching over it! Now, I’m not saying that some of the songs should be dismissed on the grounds that they don’t sound like black metal, (because, frankly, that would be rather retarded) they should be dismissed because they’re plodding, effortless shit. And it’s not like the riffs that sound remotely like black metal are any better, anyways. To get an idea of what they sound like, take all the worst elements of both second-wave black metal and USBM and combine them into one big, corpsepainted shit sandwich. At times, it’s kind of reminiscent of, say, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, but with all the aggression drained. Other times it sounds like, say, Xasthur or something, but, as much as Xasthur sucks, there is a sense of…despondency in the music; it gives off a feeling of negativity. (Although that might just be me getting angry at the music because it blows, who knows?) And that is what separates the two. While the music tries to evoke a feeling of sadness, it fails so hard that it ends up giving off vague feelings of negativity which resemble…boredom. This quite literally sounds like the musical representation of boredom. It’s negative; but the atmosphere doesn’t have nearly a strong enough effect to represent any extreme emotion.

There are some good points to this album, though. The intro and outro pieces, despite being lazy imitations of Alcest, are somewhat pleasant, I suppose. The vocals might be okay if they weren’t electronically altered to oblivion…ah, fuck it. I’m really grasping for straws here, there really isn’t anything on this album that anyone would find remotely enjoyable in the slightest. Usually when people say that, it tends to reek of hyperbole, but when I say it here I mean it in the most literal sense possible. There is nothing on here that makes you bang your head or feel any emotions or do much else than cringe in disgust. Fuck this album, fuck this band, fuck “Death4u” (my god it’s even embarrassing to fucking WRITE that name) and even though I haven’t heard any of this guy’s other “projects”, fuck them too. Rites of the Black Mass is a pus-filled pimple on the ass of black metal and should be either avoided at all costs, or listened to and ridiculed due to its intense sucking. I feel guilty for giving this album two whole points.