![]() ![]() I suppose there is something almost slightly individualistic about a Mayhem album written by someone who's biggest Norwegian black metal idol is obviously Yusaf Parvez, considering how much of the album's riffs sound like they were lifted straight from Ved Buens Ende's black metal parts and the first two Dødheimsgard albums, while Hellhammer does his best to squeeze them into a Mayhem corset by replicating his previous rhythms, many times going as far as to recreate previous fills hit by hit.Īnd surely a case can be made in support of the idea of Mayhem ditching their attempts at experimenting a lot, since after the handful of cool ideas on Grand Declaration of War, none of their attempts at modernising their sound were particularly successful. So finally getting fully on topic we bzzzz through the tremolo pickings and blast beats and Attila vocal acrobatics of wowing listeners with a "return to black metal" to the best of everybody's abilities. Sure it's "competent", and sure for many people it would "pass muster", but what is there that I would ever want to listen to again after writing this review? What is the chance for me in percent to listen to this again after writing this review about this very competent album that passes muster? I'd say it's zero percent. And that's why it doesn't matter that whoever the knob turning guy was on the album knew how to turn knobs. That's why it doesn't matter that Atilla Csihar can do a hundred different vocal styles with about seventy sounding like a a human being produced them. That's why it doesn't matter that Necrobutcher is once again probably present. That's why it doesn't matter that Hellhammer obviously knows how to play the drums. And something like 0% is something like 0%.Īnd that's why it doesn't matter that some random dude from Nidingr whoever the fuck that is and some random dude from Cradle of Filth can play tremolo picking reasonably well without sustaining major injuries. Something like 20% is like maybe some time in the future it'll get another curiousity spin. ![]() Something like 50% is like yeah maybe, maybe not. Something like 80% is that you'll most likely spin it again quite a few times. That's the thing people want, not "passing muster", and that's why the decision of Metal Archives to introduce percentages as the rating system from the get go comes in handy, because it allows the kind of rating system that I have used from the start, and which is the only logical rating system you can use for a metal album: What chance, in percent, is there, after writing this review, for me to listen to this album again? If it's 100%, obviously that's the type of stuff you wanna spin again and again. Songs they want to listen to with their metalhead friends at parties. Songs they want to hear played live at live shows. Albums they want to hear again and again. Nah, obviously in metal, what people look for is music that they want to hear again and again. But is "passing muster" really what any metalhead looks for in a metal album? Are metalheads really looking for what sounds reasonably well the one time they listen to it? The knob turning guy knows how to turn knobs so all instruments can be heard, that's some points. ![]() Everybody plays reasonably well, that's some points. Everybody plays in time, that's some points. All the instruments are tuned, that's some points. But is that really anything we want to rate metal albums by, albums in a genre that inspires passion like few others, like it's some American high school physics test? The logic behind it is to rate each album by how much "passes muster", the same way an American high school teacher would rate a physics test. Well first of all I'm not American obviously. It's been a thing for years that people feel all self-assured to equal the Metal Archives ratings to American high school tests. Some people just randomly decided to set these goalposts for everybody else and decided they are in the right to judge everybody else by their own random standards. Because there isn't actually anything in the rules and regulations of the Metal Archives on how to use the review ratings, which percentages mean good or bad, or at which point percentages mean good or bad. Because you know how it goes, when you come out and give a 0% rating to an album where the band members play competently and the producer manages a competent production, you know the usual suspects are in place with their accusations of "trolling" and "gatekeeping" and "metal elitism", even though all they do is measure others by their own randomly set goalposts. The thing is, with a review like this, with a rating you see above, I have no other choice but to begin with a self-indulgent monologue about the rating system. ![]()
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