Review Summary: If I was a POW and had to choose between being waterboarded or listening to this, I would choose being waterboarded everyday of the week and twice on Sunday.
Book Of Sand refer to their style of music as "alternate dimension symphonic black metal" - I call it f
ucking terrible. It's a shame, because the concept behind their music is interesting; delirious childlike melodies alongside raw black metal. It may seem weird, but I'm sure if properly executed, it could be effectively chilling. That is not the case of The Face of the Deep. There is not one iota of cohesion to be found anywhere on the album's seven tracks. The abstract elements would have been better on their own. In fact, if Book of Sand had made this "alternate dimension ambient", it could have potentially been good; the eerie toy piano tinkering on "I Can Stand Right Here, See My Face on the Other Side" is terrifying in the best way possible, but is ultimately spoiled by its black metal backing. They just don't go together.
Beside the fact that every song is a tangle of disjointed sounds and ill-executed ideas, the band consistently fails to create even just one remotely good black metal passage. It's essentially the same monotonous bass-y tremolo picked line throughout each song. "The Water of the Forest Is Happy" almost makes this sound work - it's oddly upbeat, and for a second everything comes together - until they decide to pile EVEN more nonsense atop the already confusing jumble of noises.
The most insulting thing about The Face of Deep however, is that it was supposed to sound this way- that this is all
intentional. I'm sure if asked, the band would come up with some faux-intellectual statement about how I am missing the point, or the concept is just too high-brow for me to grasp; but as a listener of abrasive genres of music (HNW, power electronics, etc...) I can safely say, that this is just plain awful. Don't listen to this.
