Rexorcist's Reviews Thread

[Rexorcist]

PART V

Okay, starting from track 51, Penpen2, this one is a short ambient track with some random vocal samples, a very calming way to start it out. Nicely produced, nothing special. As I expected, we get right into a someone typically dance track on 14u, a pun on "one for you." Once again it has a fairly clever mix of beat and melody in the background that keeps things shifting at a good even pace, but that constant "one for you one for me" sample isn't very interesting. In fact, it's a little annoying. Oval Ratty is a nine-minute track that gets really interesting really quickly. With a deep beat and a rhythm and sound, reminding me of Aquatic Ruin Zone, the ambience and atmosphere soon turn into an extremely complex piece of constant breeziness, although it might be a little TOO complex. It's easy for that melody that the song started out with the get lost in all the activity. Eventually, the abundance tones down, thankfully, and the surrealism and catchiness can continue much more easily, taking care of the overlength issue of the first act. Next is Woolwich Is Trying to Kill Me, which almost instantly impressed me with its two combined melodies. But since this remains the main focus of the five minutes, all the attempts at shifting the backgrounds come second, which means the melodies can easily distract from them. Next is Ambliwans, whatever that means. Tried googling it, I only got Amblin Entertainment. Anyway, this one's less melody-based, but treats its very different, more beat-driven sounds the same way the last one did, putting one instrument up front and shifting the rest in an even fashion overtime. But because any actual melody is drowned out, I didn't really have any fun with this one. There's a faint beat in the background, but it has no real presence when drowned out by everything else. to end this six is the 10-minute Pest Control, and god is this one repetitive. It has a fantastically icy vibe to it, I'll give it that, but it takes a while for things to actually shift around. It doesn't make a strong point of that until halfway through.

As a self-reference, the next track is titled "Hunter Gatherer," which was the name of various EP's with many different tracks released in different places with the same name. The track makes use of squelching before returning to trademark Naked Flames vocal ambiance. A very simple melody switches between foreground and background depending on how much the atmosphere takes over. It largely makes use of a sample of the chorus to Who Can It Be Now by Men at Work by the four-minute point. It remains enjoyable throughout the whole thanks to noticeable changes of pace, but is still way too long. Go On Treat Yourself is less than half the time, but it's a quite simple and somewhat repetitive dub techno track that only has mood going for it. There's a stronger sense of that mood in the next track, Foos With Sweet. but it manages to be even more simple in this respect. Until the halfway point, the only thing going for it is that the strong mood has the same kind of nocturnal vibe you'd get from club jazz. Then some squelching comes in and gives it a kick, even if it detracts from the nocturnal essence.

Track 60 is called "Two Whales in a Car." I hope it's a clown car. Anyway, this nine-minuter is probably the most repetitive so far. It tries to astound with excellent atmospheric production, but forgets to be a song at the same time. Every shift that happens in the song takes too long to actually get there. Track 61, Hackney Marshes Has Me in Tatters, is only four minutes, and its lead rhythm is kinda goofy and simple, which leads me to believe that Naked Flames just quickly threw it together. Thankfully, once the backdrops kick in, things get pretty cool and retro. But once again, it forgets to go anywhere interesting. My last chance for a decent time today would be Catseyes. It's much slower, and actually shows NF bothering to even give consideration to a different type of tempo. This is yet another exercize in atmosphere that doesn't both with melody and try to pretend to be catchy, so there's something admirable about that decision. Out of the twelve, this was easily the most impressive, but then again that's not saying it's a legend or anything.

Okay, so I have one more set of twelve to go. I guess I'll just finish it today.

Knollcrest is nearly five minutes. It starts out with an interesting slow melody that continues throughout, and it's quite nice to listen to. Although the changes in the backdrop are faint and occasional, it at least maintains a charming and almost forest-like presence. Lantern-Joeyboy returns thesmoother vibe and an acoustic beat, displaying a sample that I might've heard on the album before, or maybe on another album? If it wasn't a previous track inspired by Metheny, then I wanna say it WAS Metheny (give me a break, I only heard this album once). It introduces some beautiful atmospheric elements to keep it very strong, so finally I get a great performance again. Soul of Cartrip smacks you with a higher pitch and more energy, despite the atmospheric focus. This is a song that goes for changes of pace, but it's also going for catchiness and fails completely. Soul of Cartrip would be a much more interesting song if it had bothered to make a good enough riff to justify the shifts. And Smarter Dan goes for energy, but with the lack of shifts and any kind of rhythm, it's just so boring in comarison to practically everything else. Donkeywork goes for ryhtm once more, but seems to be more focues on a somewhat cutesy attitude for some reason. The melody once again suffers as it's not so interesting, which is telling me that Naked Flames ran out of ideas for this album specifically because he wanted to fill a seven-hour album.

Next is the second-to-last segue, "No Title," which is a faint windy sound providing background to a couple repeated samples of the phrase... eff off. Worst segue so far. I'm soon proven right about the lost ideas wit Got Milque, which is a total rehash of the filler in every sense of the way. But interestingly enough, the final segue is a beautiful piano melody called Cambridge Piano, which is a big sigh of relief from the tropes, but is also disappointing in the sense that it's only a quick 99 seconds. Next is the short and sweet One Can Only Hope is an ambient track that assaults you more and more overtime, so it was kind of nice. The Loveliest Thing is a very dark and eerie track that repeats its simple rhythm with a collective of creepy atmospheric touches, so while it's formulaic for the album it's also different and still somewhat inventive. Next is the nine-minute Shadwell is Getting Scary, which is halfway made up of repeating a child's rhyme to some basic outsider house and techno production and then going down to absolute minimalism like, as Salieri would say, a rusty squeeze box. And the whole albums ends with another nine minute track, Sink Steps, which kickstarts with a disco sample. Why didn't some of the filler kickstart with disco samples? A few of those would've helped this monster of an album. This one makes a much stronger point of being catchy thanks to its disco sample. Worked out for Crescendolls, after all, but it's also focused on mixing things up and an even basis, so it was a good way to end the album.

Welp, I'm finally done with this seven hour behemoth of an album. It's not the longest album I've ever heard, but even then, the ten-hour one I have heard, a Grateful Dead Fillmore West collection, remained imaginative even when repeating tracks, so this one was easy to see as loaded with both brilliance and filler, so it's only right to givre this about an 8/10.

[Rexorcist]

Behemoth - The **** ov God (2025)
Genres: Black Death Metal

Even though I believe in God, I've made a point of forgiving people for "sins" that don't really affect me. Now matter how much I bitch and whine, there will be people who disagree with me on philosophy, so might as well accept it as a part of the natural world while acknowledging the difference in philosophy. So I've indeed heard satanic music before. I've heard all the Slayer albums, a good deal of Bathory, and am of the opinion that the best death metal band is Septicflesh. But Behemoth really made their point of hatred towards religion a million times over, so do we really need it again?

Considering how familiar this album is, I'm going to have to say "not this time." Behemoth's "The **** ov God" is obviously built specifically to get anti-religious people to buy the album, as if they're relying on edge factor. Newsflash: that's how people LOSE interest. Hell, Wes Craven used to think being edgy was what mattered most, and his early career was pretty downhill once he hated and disowned his own porn flick, and switched right to THEMES, which made his movies much better overtime. But Behemoth took the opposite route.

Now the two good things that can be said about this album are that the production is absolutely perfect. The crystal clarity is some of the finest in metal, but that's to be expected from veterans. As well, half the riffs are quite catchy, which really does help. I found myself really enjoying the bits that got quite proggy, like the midtro of O Venvs, Come. So there's a strong metal energy here that can help everything be at least fairly enjoyable to some, but this is also an extremely typical album for them. I said half the riffs were catchy, but the other half are so standard that you can pull them off of any obscure crap lost in the RYM charts. So only half the time does the production justify these performances. As well, taking a look at the lyrics, they feel thrown together and basic. The overabundance of old-timey / medieval phrasing seems to distract from that aggressive, angry nature that they're trying to promote so brutally, so the ancient vibes and the religious anger kind of contradict each other like matter and antimatter.

So this most recent entry in the Behemoth catalogue was an attempt at bringing back the vibes of their most beloved work, The Satanist, but the quality steers a bit closer to their middling debut, Sventevith. Fun moments and boring moments are held together with a strong metallic presence and pure diamond production, so while it's perfectly listenable, it has its problems.

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[Rexorcist]

Destruction - Sentence of Death (1984)
Genres: Teutonic Thrash Metal

I never hear anyone talk about the band Destruction these days, but they still get really good reviews. I guess they're one of those bands you just check out if you like thrash history or have a soft spot for the Teutonic stuff. Since I need to review one of their albums for the list challenges on Metal Academy, I started with their debut extended play, Sentence of Death. The apocalyptic spoken intro was cheesy enough as I expect, but even though there's some pretty good rif***e here, at this point, I've just heard so much thrash like this, even though this is the really early stuff. Having been released about four months after Metallica's game-changing Ride the Lightning, this sounds pretty generic in comparison and many other thrash albums, even better ones, would sound just like this. I suppose all the dark and thunderous sound effects are their attempt at a sense of art, which is fine, but I'd prefer if their riffs more greatly reflected that. Now for early thrash, this relies on darkened screams, general speed, and decent riffs. They go for a speed metal route that comes off a bit punkish, and can even be seen as a small factor in the early development of black metal. But other than that, there's nothing here that Metallica, or even Venom, didn't do better. It's obvious that writing was of least concern as long as they could be fast and edgy, and they kind of succeed at that. But since it's only a debut EP, it';s obviously not the most well-produced thing on Earth. These guys were obviously young and just wanted to rock the basics of a new world and grab a piece of that Metallica action. Decent, but only really necessary if you're a thrash history buff.

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Destruction - Infernal Overkill (1985)
Genres: Teutonic Thrash Metal

It's obvious that the band was trying a little harder in the art department to keep things a little more sophisticated, especially from such a progressive intro track. Much more interesting things are done with the hardcore-style riffs, finding clever ways to combine multiple repetitive riffs together for some grand new idea. A very goo example of that is the middle-section to The Ritual, which found ways to be unpredictable despite its lacking progression of, ahem, different notes. But this usually isn't the case. There's still the filler aspect in which production and speed are the major factors. For example, Death Trap just goes on for far too long. It's got some damn good riffs, but it's a bit easy for these guys to draw out five minutes when their biggest concerns are speed and atmosphere. And Tormentor sounds like a broken record until you get to the guitar solo. Hell, the eight-minute closer, Black Death, is basically switching between the same two riffs throughout the run, managing to do less imaginitive things than the four-minute opener. So in a way, it feels like they didn't really care about the fans enough to really write their own Stairway. There are noticeable improvements in the production and a few of the riffs, so there's that, but the fact that they went from the three-minute songs to five minuts with little change in most instances is a little of an insult.

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Destruction - Eternal Devastation (1986)
Genres: Teutonic Thrash Metal

Big three of Teutonic thrash? I was starting to question such a decision made by 80's society with Destruction's debut EP and debut studio album failing to meet my standards for greatness. I was really hoping for something more artistic this time. judging from the way Curse the Gods put up a couple more tricks, making six minutes feel like four at the same time, I thought to myself I might finally get that are I was lookin6 for. I mean, sure, they fall in the same tempo and stylistic tropes for the most part, but it seemed like they were really trying to get something historical out there. Or so I thought at first. Unfortunately, there are still times where things feel too drawn out yet again. It's obvious that the five-to-six minute edge doesn't generally work for them.What really bothers me about this album is the way the percussion sounds. It's not heavy enough, being almost entirely drowned out by the lead and rhythm guitars. Now the unpredictable sense of art comes back for the shorter songs on Side B, making things interesting again. The drums can even be heard properly. The last track is even a much better example of the aggression and technique that the band's been largely relying on, being much heavier and more powerful than ever. So while this managed to be a slight improvement in writing, it also fixed its production problem in the first half.

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[Rexorcist]

Merzbow - Metalvelodrome
Genres: Harsh Noise

On my noise ventures I found myself mostly driven by the challenge of finding truly artistic music from the more extreme variants: harsh noise and harsh noise wall. And I've found some that I've liked, but mostly when it plays with other genres like a Uboa album. But this 4-hour Merzbow album is at the top of the RYM harsh noise charts. Was that a good sign, or is this an album that only the ones who would listen to four hours would finish anyway, thus allowing less people who see problems with it to even rate it in the first place? Since I have the capacity to enjoy noise music and am mostly a rocker, I felt I had to say something.

And this is what I have to say: it's definitely the latter. If Merzbow, a man who had been doing noise albums for 15 years up to that point, wanted to make a 4-hour behemoth of ugly sound, then he should've done more to play with the sound. By this point, the vast majority of noise tricks pulled in these four hours can be done by literally anybody if you ask me. I've heard imitators that were much more intriguing. It starts out cool, but the entire first half is just generic noise music at this point. Now a lot of wacky and cool ideas are played in the 45-minute track, Another Crash for High Tide. The weird sounds, the vocal effects, it's all pretty cool. But there's so much packed into it that most of these ideas only get about 20 seconds of album time. And the worst part? THIS SONG STARTS AFTER THE FIRST TWO HOURS ARE OVER. In other words, it's two hours of generic noise before creativity has a say. Why the hell didn't Merzbow flesh all of these ideas out into better songs throughout the whole? That's pretty infuriating, especially since it goes back to generic noise for the rest of it, mostly.

This four hour behemoth needs a serious re-evaluation on RYM by more serious and diversified explorers. This is a pretty standard noise album for most of it with some creativity attached, going into unholy lengths to get 1 job done for three out of the four hours. Merzbow would do much better in the close-by following years, so while this album shouldn't need to be heard, historically speaking, it doesn't deserve to be the highest rated harsh noise album on RYM at all, let alone any website that covers noise music. If you wanna hear REAL Merzbow music, try Electric Salad.

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[Rexorcist]

Merzbow - Pulse Demon
Genres: Harsh Noise

I got kicked right into Merzbow right after I found out that a critically-polarized album of his, Pulse Demon, just so happened to be twice as popular as any of his second most popular album, Venereology, which had much better reviews. Seriously, it's the weirdest thing, considering that he's a harsh noise artist, and he had an album reaching nearly 10000 reviews on RYM. So asking the reddit, I found that Pulse Demon was popular online for meme usage, notably pertaining to inaccessible albums. So I checked out several Merzbow albums beforehand; some were great, some were boring. Now where does his most famous album fit into all of this?

I expected the album to be largely made up of pretty standard Merzbow, and the first two tracks were no surprise. It was pretty clear that in most instances, I would NOT be getting the imaginitive prowess of greats like the totally psychedelic Electric Salad. I was in for 75 minutes of the norm. Well, thankfully, some creativity made minor appearances in the next two tracks, and then came the first eleven-minute epic, Ultra Marine Blues, and there were plenty of great ideas scattered around that would make brilliant tracks on their own or combined with another. It starts out highly psychedelic, and sometimes it sounds drowned in water, but it can instantly turn sporadic like a zealot screaming about an apocalypse and convulsing on the stairs at City Hall. Unfortunately, all these ideas had about twenty seconds of album time, which means all these great ideas got no development. That's real kick in the swimsuit section.

The sixth track and the second eleven-minute epic, Tokyo Times Ten, started out with a few minutes of a great industrial beat that gave it a much more unique and even urban feel, but most of it returns to standard Merzbow behavior pretty quickly, which means the album was mostly thrown together for the most part. And the album ended the same way with one more track, only at six minutes. So at the end of the day, my predictions were mostly correct this time. This album doesn't really deserve to be so popular just because of a meme.

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