I had to do it. I’m usually not one to go and say an album is a complete waste of time, but somewhere I have to draw the line. It’s not often that I wouldn’t listen to an album even if it was given to me for free, because a band would really have to try to make an album so bad I can’t bear to listen to it. Seriously, though, if you can tolerate the insanity which is some of the black metal bands out there, you can tolerate most anything in the musical world. But alas, here we have an album which fails on so many levels, an album which goes absolutely nowhere in it’s running time, an album which literally
hurts to listen to. This album is Urfaust’s contribution to the world’s pollution problem, entitled
Verraterischer Nichtswurdiger.
I’ll begin with a brief overview of what exactly it is you will find in this album. It sounds like a failed attempt at ambient black metal (think an even worse version of Lurker Of Chalice) with lots and lots of white noise and reverb, occasionally tainted with the voice of what sounds like a very gay (not happy) man frolicking through a field of daisies. If this does not sound appealing to you, look no further for reasons why not to even give this an attempt to impress you. The album switches between ambient tracks which drag on for far too long (I’m talking upwards of 13 minutes of
nothing) and absolutely horrid attempts at black metal which makes most Norwegian garage bands sound like superstars.
The first failure, as I mentioned earlier, is Urfaust’s stange attempts at ambient tracks which turn out as nothing more than bland, awkward tracks which will often lose the listener for many minutes on end. Take the first track, “Dunkel, Still Von Ewigkeit” for example. It begins with repeated violin notes for the first seven and a half minutes, before a random blast of orchestration jolts the listener from the deep sleep they might be in. Not to worry, because just as quickly as that orchestra comes in, it fades back to that violin for the next three minutes. Near the end of the song, the orchestra comes back in playing what seems to be an “epic” and “evil” concerto which has absolutely no connection with the past 11 minutes of the song. It’s basically rinse and repeat for the next instrumental, the 10:21 track “Trauerhohle”, with the moments of calm ambience broken by irrelevant moments of orchestral noise.
It’s strange to call this “ambient” “black” or even “metal”, but to call it all three is astounding. The “heavier” tracks on the album contain absolutely no ambience at all, that is saved for the three instrumental pieces. I’m not sure if I got this wrong, but I thought that the black metal and the ambient were supposed to be combined into each song, not separated from each other. Maybe I’ve listened to too much Burzum, but that is the sort of message I got from the phrase “ambient black metal”.
If the ambient isn’t good, things aren’t looking too bright for the black metal. I would say it’s hard to go downhill from the first track, but the second song “Ragnarok Mystiker”, despite its cliché title, crashes the bar even further down. This song pretty much speaks for the 3 other heavier songs, so try and bear with me. The production absolutely swallows the guitars, drums, and bass. Basically all you are hearing is a blend of noise in the background, with nothing distinctly audible save the crashing, crashing, crashing of the cymbals. It’s the musical equivalent of taking a nail and hitting it repeatedly into a limb of your choice. However, we are treated with the vocal styling of what seems to be an American Idol reject gone black metal. The vocals are of the singing flavor, but lets just say it’s not quite in tune. They are often very, very awkward and almost never flow with the instruments which are quietly sinking in the sea of reverb in the background. The best way I can describe the singing is what I stated before, they sound like one of the guys from ‘Queer Eye For The Straight Guy’ began serenading to himself, unknowing that he would soon be placed at the front of a black metal album. That’s not it either, the other style of the vocals is one which will make anyone quite near piss their pants laughing. It’s a high pitched screech which I would associate with that of a monkey. It is so out there and so horrible it will make you laugh the first time you hear it, but make you break down and weep some time later, because you know that this a legitimate, signed band. Very sad indeed.
Vocals aside, the album still remains an absolute train wreck. The instruments are very unprofessional and not creative at all. The riffing of the electric guitar is your basic chug-chug-chug riff surrounded by blast beats, something countless black metal bands do. There are basically no melodies to be found here, although some may be washed away by the production, which leaves a lot to be desired, to say the least. Yes, I know, black metal is supposed to have poor production, but this is where I must draw the line. If you take probably the only shred of hope this album has with an electric guitar melody and simply shove it in the background in favor of the vocals, that is where I must stop and say something is wrong. There is no bass guitar for all I can hear, and the drums do nothing more than play blast beats while the cymbals crash away (their volume very loud, for some odd reason).
I honestly don’t think that there is more to say with regard to this album. Urfaust completely failed with this album, and made me laugh harder than I ever have while listening to a metal album. In a genre full of clichés and cheesiness, this is the epitome, the top of the mountain, of all of it. If a fan of a genre listens to an album which makes him ashamed to listen to that same genre, then you know something has gone terribly wrong. Steer clear at all costs.
