Screamo Vomit - "Eonian" Review (0%)
Shagrath, Dimmu Borgir's vocalist and frontman, recently gave an interview about his latest album Eonian to Death Metal Underground in which he answered the dreaded question about why black metal "reject Dimmu Borgir's music" and his opinions on extreme metal fans mocking him and his band.
His answer was, predictably, a diatribe of straw men, incoherent mentions of other unrelated bands (Satyricon, *snort*), fallacious comparisons with other genres "In X they would never [...]", some unverifiable "inferiority complex towards the mainstream" claims about the underground and, finally, Shagrath settling almost provocatively for the "why me bullied?".
I don't know, how about you try not playing screamo you worthless cuck.
So, Eonian, Dimmu Borgir's latest "performance art" troll, I believe. I hope.
Well, it sucks.
One of the least interesting albums in history, though perhaps not as shit as Summoning. It has more tracks than novel ideas. At least all the tracks don't start with "The ..." as with In Sorte Diaboli. The only thing intriguing about this album is how different tracks with the same tempo and same number of riffs - one - manage to have different run times.
This is basically Suicide Silence if they played nu metal with black metal influences instead of nu metal with death metal influences.
Eonian is just the same incidental deafkore chugging riffs under screamo singsong crap before it goes into pop rock parts, then it relies on the drummer - not Hellhammer, of all people - to progress the songs underneath enduringly novel innovations like chugging on the root note, chugging on the root note *without* palm muting, tremolo picked half-step bends and more chugging on the root note.
Screamo Vomit
Eonian is a degenerative piece of crap. It's difficult to see what people see in this garbage.
The only thing they accomplish is fulfilling every black metal cliché immediately available. Perhaps that's the reason why it has such an enduring popularity amongst posers. The only reason albums like this exist is to please a bunch of butt-rocking head bangers who care about nothing, except for beer and well, banging their heads against the wall.
There is enough crap on Eonian to lower one's intelligence in such a manner. Repetitive song structures, laughable attempts at atmosphere, budget "black metal for dummies" riffs and a pretentious Pantera inspired macho guy attitude to boot, which is why this album sucks.
One aspect that makes Dimmu Borgir's music so worthless is those lousy riffs. Of course, there is a variety of crummy riffs, they come in all shapes in sizes, but they all sound identical after the first few listens.
There's blunt groove riffs that try to stress how heavy they are, and that's about it. Some of them are those tremendously irritating stop-start chugs that surely must have been inspired by mall core bands from across the Atlantic.
Just observe certain riffs, all of them contain their share of pathetic groove laden riffs with Pantera's signature syncopated strumming on the top two strings and the frequent flowery melodic relief. The only exceptions are the following songs: "Interdimensional Summit", which is basically a collection of stolen Darkthrone riffs; "I Am Sovereign", which is a laughable display of emo; "Archaic Correspondence", which isn't too bad.
Although they do contain a viable sense of melody - at the difference from war metal which is just mindless chromatic bullshit and probably generated randomly - it is far from being well articulated. The melodies are assembled and mixed together like Dimmu Borgir was making a pop album. They are mainly displayed as lead melodies for the sake of catching someone's attention, and to get them hooked, but never to progress the songs or develop any atmosphere.
And with catchy riffs like these, any moron will be instantly attracted, but since there is nothing worthwhile going on, after the third or fourth track even the double-digit IQ players will get bored with Shagrath's emo screams and all that remains will be comprised of the actual, the literal, the sped-wearing and slack-jawed drooling handicapped.
The worst crime on Eonian however, is the embarrassingly redundant song construction. Every track follows the pop rock model introduced to extreme metal with At the Gates' Slaughter of the Soul: cyclical, organized around a "catch" chorus and utterly predictable beyond measure.
One can even conclude that every song is composed exactly the same. They begin with some lame, unnecessary synth intro which then leads to the deathcore chug-chug-chug verse riff. The verse riff is repeated a certain number of times - far too many times; at least n-1 times too many, especially considering that it's just a perpetual palm-muted chug or an open power chord ad nauseam - which is then followed by a pre-chorus of some kind. If there is no pre-chorus, then it will lead directly to the chorus. The pattern is repeated, sometimes followed by a bridge decorated with a breakdown - yes, like in deathcore - which is just the verse riff slowed down. Once Shagrath is done screaming incoherently about Satan's phallus - as on track 6, "Lightbringer" - the aforementioned pattern is repeated one last time.
Yes, again. And every song lasts over 6 minutes, despite their being only two, sometimes three riffs with absolutely no variation in mood, theme, tempo, atmosphere, context, tone or even rhythm. Worse, every single song is so outright predictable that one could literally sit there and guess what paths the song will take, and chances are, they will be correct all the time because no effort was put into this album.
It's not black metal, it's not metal, it's barely even music. It's a product for Napalm Records - home of posers worldwide - to make money off of retarded metalheads. It is, in fact, ableism - the abuse of the mentally disabled - not much different than an unscrupulous taxi driver scamming a blind person by tripling the rates.
This is Dimmu Borgir, and it's shit screamo.
And that's why you and your band are hated Shagrath, not because of Satyricon, but because your music is screamo and all screamo is shit, and probably this album Eonian would be considered shit even amongst other screamo albums, and it's ironic because the very reason Dimmu Borgir started playing screamo was because they couldn't play black metal, and their black metal was called shit by black metal fans, and thus they moved to screamo and now their screamo is called shit by black metal fans as well as screamo fans, potentially the first screamo album that even screamo fans recognize as shit, but that doesn't stop Dimmu Borgir from recording more screamo and calling it "black metal", despite it being hated by black metal fans and screamo fans alike, whether it be called black metal or screamo, because if it's shit for black metal and it's shit for screamo, probably it's because it's shit - shit as an objective quality, not as a personal value judgement of Dimmu Borgir's music - but it's still screamo and even if it would be good for screamo it would be bad for black metal, because all screamo is shit, regardless of if it's good or bad for screamo, but the heart of the matter is that it isn't good for screamo, which is itself shit, because even the fans of screamo hate it, so it's even more shit for black metal, for screamo, for goth rock, for jazz, for techno... Just retire, it's better that way.
Eonian score: 0/100.
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