Review Summary: I want whoever is responsible for this killed.
Right now.
Sodomy is not something people like talking about. Many have religious beliefs that regard it as a sin. Others see it as an act that is just ‘disgusting’. Whatever the view on sodomy, there is one fact about it that cannot be denied: it exists. People are doing it everywhere, and they are enjoying it, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. Most would question the tastefulness of opening a review talking about sodomy, but there happens to be a point to talking about getting sodomized:
That is what listening to
Wold is like. Except, instead of getting your butt reamed, you get your ears reamed. Once you hear
Wold, you do not get your innocence back. As terrible a simile as it is to make, listening to
Wold really is like getting sodomized unwillingly. Afterwards, you can never be the same. Listening to
Wold is like having two Canadian men stick their appendages of pride in your ears and thrust over and over until you get the worst case of sticky-ear ever. Imagine, if you will, that those man-hoods are a guitar filtered through sand and rocks, a drum kit comprised entirely of trash cans and Frisbees, a singer singing through a microphone that emits a sound capable of making a puppy kill itself, and a bass so impossible to find that Carmen Sandiago should feel ashamed. This is
Wold. They are here to scare you. They are here to scar you. They are here to orally violate you.
Lasting well over an hour and sucking for every moment of it,
Wold’s album
Screech Owl has a name more fitting than anyone could have possibly known. That is, if you consider a world where the owl is actually a metaphor for an aneurysm, and that the screech is
Wold’s music. Imagine all the most terrible noises in the world. A kitten being crushed, a man being stabbed,
Aiden; all of these, even combined, pale in comparison to the gigantic paroxysmal suck that is
Wold. The production sounds like someone is scraping sand over all of the fret-boards, like the drums are recorded in a sound-proof room, and the vocals are mixed so low that they were the last thing someone thought of. The bass is so inaudible between all the morons ‘playing’ their instruments that it cannot be ascertained whether a bassist actually exists. The production is literally so bad that it makes
Ulver’s
Nattens Madrigal look like a masterpiece in comparison.
The first song (the hilariously titled
An Habitation Of Dragons And A Court For Owls) is literally a grating, loud, painful, fuzzy noise looped for four and a half minutes, while one of the worst black metal vocalists can barely be heard screeching his lungs out underneath. On one hand, you wonder why that noise is so goddamn loud; it doesn’t sound like music, and you’ve no interest in hearing it. On the other hand, you’re happy it is overpowering the vocals, since they sound like someone strangled a parrot. There are no discernible guitars or drums. Just a reverberating noise and the suffocating parrot. The album does not pick up from there, transitioning into terrible drone ambience. Imagine if
Paysage d’Hiver, instead of playing wind for 30 minutes, played static. That’s
Wold. Other songs have barely distinguishable black metal structures; on these songs, you can actually HEAR the instruments being played. The problem is, you
still don’t want to. A troupe of mentally handicapped monkeys could run circles around
Wold’s musicians as far as technique goes. When you bring compositional skills into the picture, you get Mozart compared to
Wold.
This reviewer is completely prepared for several poor souls who will inevitably claim, in their inexorable and unquestionable endless wisdom and pretentiousness, that I “do not understand
Wold; their aesthetic is acquired”. Yes. Yes it is. It’s acquired when you’re deaf. When submitted to the enormously talented crap-fest of
Wold’s music, I can’t help but imagine myself getting sodomized. It’s just that bad. If you EVER want to hurt yourself, please put this on, to remind yourself that at least, AT LEAST, you don’t suck as bad as
Wold do. It’s not a hard accomplishment (congrats
Aiden, you win at music over 1 band), but it’s enough to make someone feel better.
