Review Summary: Jesus, Crack The Window
Behemoth’s gradual devolution from reliably consistent black metal stalwarts into a much-memed edgelord sideshow has been a grim thing to witness. Frontman Nergal’s increasingly theatrical antics have chipped away at the band’s once (begrudgingly) respectable image, and this dainty collection is another temple-scratcher to bore a few extra holes into an already listing hull. It’s genuinely somewhat baffling that 2014’s
The Satanist and the ludicrously titled
The Sh*t Ov God are albums recorded by the same band. Where the former was a grand, serious and surprisingly accessible piece of work, the latter continues with the metaphorical bible-tearing and juvenile tomfoolery with the gleeful air of that one kid in school eating grass to impress no one in particular.
I had a few acquaintances in middle school who claimed they worshipped the devil, presumably after doing their multiplication table homework. Their social status? They sat in the corner of the playground painting their faces with mud and penning hit lists during break time. These are the vibes that
Sh*t is releasing into the world; noxious as methane and as predictable as encountering it in a public toilet. Beneath the jet engine level blastbeats and cavernous reverb lies an exceptionally mundane and toe-scrunchingly cringey core; an edge so fine even the slightest touch destroys it like an insect’s wing. Full disclosure: I’ve never been a dyed-in-the-wool apostate, but even I know blasphemy isn’t supposed to be this dull.
Regardless, off we march: dirt-streaked heathens into the jaws of a raging holy war. Oh, what a glorious sight it be! Our battle song? A compilation of farts so relentless it’d make the founders of CollegeHumour shed a proud tear. It’s a fetid contraption powered by UGHHHHs, ARRRGHHHs, and to some extent, EEEEEEs, with flatlining guitars and rumbling percussion belching unceremoniously out of its bowels. Misanthropic retching straight from the
Planet’s F*cked Fam school of subtlety leads the charge, punctuated by some bizarrely chipper singalong choruses that make you wonder if you’ve accidentally stumbled into a school assembly hymn… albeit one where everyone’s got inverted crucifixes drawn on their foreheads.
Tracks like ‘The Shadow Elite’, ‘Lvciferaeon’ and the title cut are corny, overlong exercises in monotony. ‘The Shadow Elite’ in particular, with a title sounding like a PS1-era lightgun shooter, expects engagement with the egregiously dumb mantra
we are the shadow elite, and even typing that out made my eye muscles start to spasm again. ‘O Venvs, Come!’ has a moment of beseeching frenzy during its typically bloated runtime that could potentially have given the track some intensity were the surrounding material not so bland. Instead of transmitting urgency, the segue has the unfortunate air of doing too much; earnest to the point of self-parody and shrill to the point of tinnitus.
While this review may read like a reaction from someone recently exposed to their first black metal album after a lifetime of listening to nothing but country,
Sh*t is the unfortunate poster child for this completely justified point of view. Admittedly, some cuts do start with relative promise, but most riffs lose impact very rapidly once it becomes impossible to ignore how basic they are, and the fidelity of the production does little to afford any additional power. The archetypical ‘wall of sound’ technique might dazzle on a first listen, but once the polish wears off the songwriting offers little to retain attention.
‘Nomen Barbarvm’, (possibly Latin for a firm-but-fair parental admonishment telling young Barbara she isn’t ready to start dating yet), features a riff so simplistic that it’ll be etched into your brain like the underside desk carvings of my devil-worshipping schoolmates once its five minutes are over. Even on occasions where the musicianship picks up, on the solo of ‘Lvciferaeon’, for instance, the surrounding musical landscape does so little to prop up the effort, ultimately allowing the semi-successful elements to float aimlessly in a vacuum of gravelly silliness and half-baked songwriting. None of it may be offensively awful, but it’s almost uniformly generic and often unintentionally hilarious.
Behemoth’s previously compelling blend of theatricality and blackened intensity is pushed to farcical extremes on
Sh*t. What once felt like bold provocation now resembles parody: extremity turned into cartoon, accessibility into laziness. The entire project seeps this immature bile from every aural orifice, every potentially powerful moment undermined by garish missteps or adolescent posturing. As a continuation of their legacy,
The Sh*t Ov God is creatively underwhelming and oddly toothless, offering nothing they haven’t done before- only this time, with all the impact sanded down. With Nergal and the bois’ reputations far exceeding the reach of their music at this point, it’s disappointing that more effort hasn’t been made on
Sh*t to justify their infamy in a more meaningful way. Instead, listeners are presented with a painfully flat and molar-grindingly cringey black metal trudge, fit to burst with noise but painfully short on innovation, memorability or entertainment value. It seems God’s got a bit of an upset tummy.
