It may not. Get better than this I mean. After scouring through
EM's short but not tiny list of Irish metal bands, and trying to avoid my home city for now, I kept coming up against the same problem: nowhere --- not on Spotify, not on Grooveshark, not even on YouTube --- could I find any more than two tracks from some artistes, and none from most. So I changed tack, and decided to leave the environs of
EM. heading out into Googleland, where I typed in those magical words: “Best Irish Metal Bands”. A page called IrishMetal came at the top of the list (after some stupid advertisement for steel pipes of course!) and the first name there just drew my attention. I quickly tapped them into Spotify and lo and behold! Up they came with an album. Well, an EP.
So these are the second Irish band I'm going to cover. Sadly, they don't even show on
EM's list, so I can't tell you where they come from, and also perhaps sadly, they marry two concepts which for me can never sit easily together and will always be eyeing each other nervously, death metal and Christian Metal. But come on! With a name like this, for an Irish band, sure I had to check them out. Ya wide or wot?
Apocalyptic visions of divine terror --- ForChristSake --- um...
More points that mark this out as being a possible mistake on my part. 1) Lots and lots of umcomplimentary remarks on the IM website. But sure, what do they know? They're just another bunch of wankers like me. It's not like they're music critics or writers. 2) Sixteen tracks. Six-fu
cking-teen! Of death metal. Oh dear. 3) The vocalist comes in for a lot of criticism. Well, let's give it a whirl and see what it's like. You may have noticed that I don't have a year shown, because I don't know for sure, but the site seems to be touting it as a new album, so possibly this year. Label is also information I am not privy to.
From the title of course you know this is not going to be any happy-clappy, kumbi-ya, Jesus-will-save-you religious rubbish. From what I can see, this is the bad Jesus. The vengeful Jesus. The one who appears at Judgement Day and stands there, nine thousand feet tall with an awful scowl on his face and glares “Crucify ME, would you? Now I'll show you fu
ckers what pain really is!” Vengeance is mine, he sayeth, and soileth we all our pants.
I'm kind of getting used to deceptive intros, and here we have a soft keyboard and synth one leading in “Blackened lands”, though a hard chugging guitar cuts in then, with a sort of choral thing going in the background. Not sure if I don't hear any vocals yet or if they're so deep they're being subsumed into the mix, but the review I read --- which was less than complimentary --- maintained the vocals were too
high in the mix, so it must be the former. Good shredding there on the guitar, and I have to assume now this is an instrumental as it reaches its last minute. It's not a long song --- three and a half minutes --- but for me it's a decent start, as what I had read about this band led me to believe they would be quite brutal, and this, well, isn't. So far anyway. Next up is “The hollow way of thinking”, and yeah, now we hear the vocals. Harsh but not indecipherable, sort of sounds like the singer (whose name I don't know) has a bad cold or a sore throat. I've definitely heard far worse.
That much said, I don't hear much structure in this song. It's mostly just the guitarist banging out the riffs, the vocalist roaring and the rest of them doing their own thing. Sort of a mixture of thrash and black metal I guess, neither of which are terribly good. Oh look! We're halfway through track three, “The leeches”, without me even realising it. That's how gripping and interesting this album is. To be honest, during “At the gates to depravity” (did you ever hear a worse title?) the guitarist sounds like he forgot how to play! Not that it seems it would particularly matter from what I'm hearing. Not impressed so far. It also doesn't help that the song is over eight minutes long! At least the next title sits well with a band who profess to support and I guess preach Christianity in their lyrics, though that seems to be all “Deliver us from evil” has going for it, as it's basically just a mess.
People talk about the “loose drumming” on this album, and I see now what they mean. At times it seems like the drummer has just decided to pound on the kit until someone stops him, and not necessarily in any sort of rhythm. Other times he just seems completely out of step with the rest of the band. At least there's a higher-pitched vocal here and some pretty decent guitar work, but it's still nothing I'd be proud to call Irish. In fact, its positioning as a Christian Metal band from Ireland is nothing short of embarrassing. I'm envisaging having a hard time getting through the next eleven --- yeah, eleven! --- tracks. If this is the best Ireland has to offer in the arena of Heavy Metal, then God help us all! (Pun intended) Play me some Planxty or Christy Moore, please! Oh, thought it was going into a bit of an introspective passage there on the bass, but we only got a few notes before it piled back into the usual headlong speed as it crashes towards its end. If only it were the end of the whole album!
But we must steel ourselves and soldier on. Well, ok, “Last call” has a nice --- no. It started with something of a hooky melody but within seconds had descended into another total mess, with some strange keyboard lines it seems thrown across the tune, like someone throwing down a coat at a party, not in the least bothered where they leave it. I thought I heard flute there in the mix too, but it's probably just my brain disintegrating, or maybe it's on the keys? Doesn't add anything to the song other than a further level of confusion though. At least this is a short track, and each one takes us closer to the end of the thing, so that's something to hold on to. The next one is long though, and looking fearfully ahead I see another six, a seven and an eight-minuter before we can consign this thing to the trashheap. “Shadow” is a little slower and grindier, with some decent riffs threatening to break through and the drumming almost in time, a sort of ominous sound on the guitar and synth taking the tune in the second minute, and doing a competent enough job with it.
There's an attempt at an atmospheric opening to “Serpent rising”, but the drums come in way too soon and far too powerfully, reducing and spoiling what might have been a nice effect. Now guitars blunder in and to finish the song off completely the vocalist snarls the lyric. Kind of retains a mid-paced boogie-ish beat, but let's be honest: it's really hard to take any of this seriously, especially when the almost falsetto vocal joins the harsher one. Oh. My. God. And not in a good way. Look, I don't care what religion you go with, or if you go with none, but death metal and Christianity just don't mix. It's offputting to hear what is clearly supposed to be a dark, evil voice intoning
”Look to Christ and live!” Just doesn't track man, just doesn't track. That whole growly vocal is almost always associated with death, black or in some cases thrash metal, and wittering on about God in that voice just doesn't work for me. It's almost funny, but then, it's not meant to be is it? These guys expect you to take them seriously, which is really hard to do.
“Red moon” has one of the darkest, dirtiest vibe I've heard in a song, but it's more I think a case of muddy production, or bad playing than anything intentional. Everything seems to almost fade into one mess of noise, and the only thing that rises in the mix is the vocals. “Walk among the dead” seems to finally get it right, with a dark, doomy sound driven by, for once, very competent drumming and a bleak synth line that makes the tune sound like something out of a horror movie, but it only last under a minute and a half, and is instrumental, leading into “Necronemesis”, which at least has a clever title. That's all it has. It's another hack'n'slash rocker that goes nowhere, very fast. Okay, to be fair, there's a very good solo at the end. At least there are only five tracks left, though one of them is eight minutes long, but to perhaps compensate for that, two are only two minutes long. Might as well get it over with then!
“Inhalation asphyxia” tries very hard to be Slayer but is not worthy of licking their boots, while “Deification” (which at first I took to be “Defecation”!) starts with a slow, dark chorus and a grinding, Sabbathy riff, which is quite effective. I don't however expect it to last. The guitar flourishes placed over it are in fact really good and work in well with the overall melody. I'd say this is an instrumental, except that it's seven minutes long. And in the second minute it all goes into overdrive again, completely destroying the dark atmosphere they had built up so carefully. Now it's just another sub-standard thrasher. Oh well, can't say I didn't expect it. Well, “Inferno” has passed by unnoticed and now we're into the title track, not that it makes any difference. One more to go.
“Dawn of a new day” is the other short track, and you might expect it to be a ballad, or at least less frenetic than the previous fifteen tracks? Well, you know you'd be right. Lush synth, choral vocals, strings and a nice epic closer to what is generally a very subpar and generic album. I think I'd rather listen to Fleshgrind! At least I could laugh at them.
TRACKLISTING
1. Blackened lands
2. The hollow way of thinking
3. The leeches
4. At the gates of depravity
5. Deliver us from evil
6. Last call
7. Shadow
8. Serpent rising
9. Red moon
10. Walk among the dead
11. Necronemesis
12. Inhalation asphyxia
13. Deification
14. Inferno
15. Apocalyptic visions of divine terror
16. Dawn of a new day
There's really nothing good I can say about this album. It came across to me as just a mess: chaotic, undisciplined, and the odd bit of talent notwithstanding, really quite an amateur effort. Somebody reviewing this remarked that as an EP, this is way too long. I would agree. Even as an album, sixteen tracks is too many, especially when some of them hit over the seven minute mark. But then, if they were good I wouldn't really have a problem with that. This however has been a real chore to get through, and does not fill me with confidence for the state of metal in Ireland.
I hate to repeat myself, but let's hope we have better luck next time. Again.