Review Summary: Progressive Classical Pop-Electro Black Metal N’ Roll
0 of 3 thought this review was well writtenWhoever came up with the idea of Electro Black Metal? What an absurd idea. Surely it couldn’t work. It’s just a large improbability...right?
Anyone familiar with the underground Black Metal scene has heard of the bands Austere, Woods of Desolation or Nazxul and many other related projects. What do all these projects have in common? They’re all projects featuring Sorrow, or Tim as you may or may not know him. Being one of the biggest musicians on the Australian Black Metal scene, Tim has also been working on his solo project Germ, which he started in 2003. A project dedicated to his love of Rock, Pop, Electronic, Classical and Black Metal music. Dedicated followers of his may have been a little shaky about this idea, but Tim debuted his first Germ album
Wish in March, 2012 and, well, it works a lot better than one might have guessed.
Let’s face it, nobody ever imagined that Black Metal fused with cheesy 80’s synths and Rock music would have turned out well, but this album is a pleasant surprise. Germ has got the atmospheric grandeur common in Black Metal, along with Tim’s signature wails, still unintelligible and full of power. Over the top of that there are excessive synths, Rock and Heavy Metal style guitar solos and at times there are operatic vocals in the background. It all just goes onto a massive scale and defines the word ‘epic.’ The album feels like a desolate space adventure, which it should, seeing as the album is heavily space-themed.
But this album does take a turn for the worse and it’s quite a large downside: Tim’s clean vocals. When he’s shrieking, he’s excellent and it compliments the music perfectly, but he heavily uses clean vocals on this record and he’s just...not very good. It makes it a chore to sit through and because of his very
lame vocal work with his cleans, it just brings the tacky 80’s Pop Rock feel to new highs, or lows, it seems.
However when he’s not singing, the music is phenomenal and is more than enough to make up for it. Even though listening to this album might make me feel like a square, it’s still a fun listen and I haven’t disliked any less over multiple listens, in fact quite the opposite, this album really grows. I do recommend listening to this at least once, at least to say you’ve listened to Progressive Classical Pop-Electro Black Metal N’ Roll.
