Plagiarized - "Under the Sign of Hell" Review (0%)
This to modern listeners is black metal?
You must first ask yourself who is the modern listener.
The modern listener is a Dimmu Borgir worshiper raised on commercial pop metal acts like Nightwish and Arch Enemy, who has been conditioned due to decades of media brainwashing to grant more importance to image and gimmicks than to actual music quality.
Well this molested child known as Under the Sign of Hell is just that, a fucking mannequin having been fucked from behind one too many times by Gorgoroth's pathetic commercial aspirations.
A plastic, frail duplicate of what once was a real metal genre, of what once was a real movement.
These video game playing, shopping mall rejects are what's to be offered in much of the modern commercial "pop metal" scene. It's no surprise that some of Gorgoroth's biggest fanboys are from North America, home of every "Walmart" pseudo-metal embarrassment.
When MTV caught wind of this band I can quite clearly see why they were unable to resist the temptation of turning what could have been a not-very-funny but otherwise innocuous joke band into the poster children of a genre they were never a part of.
Gorgoroth were never black metal.
They were never part of the scene (as confirmed by both Varg Vikernes and Fenriz on several occasions), and have never even played something close to black metal music.
From their debut album Pentagram to this day, they never ceased to be the poser clown act that the media loves so much to promote as the "face" of black metal.
But Under the Sign of Hell is a particularly smelly turd in Gorgoroth's already shitty discography.
Plagiarized
The music itself on Under the Sign of Hell is utter recycled bullshit.
If you take certain tracks for instance, such as Funeral Procession, it's a pure ripoff of the old school primitive bands such as early Beherit, though more so I believe Gorgoroth ripped this off from the modern French black metal band Antekhrist.
Throughout this album you hear not just a ripoff of great original bands such as Beherit, but also great Norwegian bands like Immortal... they are both from Bergen so this probably won't come as a shock to many.
They play either Slipknot style nu-metal or a modern Darkthrone inspired black 'n roll.
Oops, is that a Burzum riff?
Overall it's very monotonous and very boring, with little variation other than when the vocalist shouts "Hail Satan" over generic and derivative mallcore breakdowns.
If there is anything original about this band it's merely their ability to cloak their "influences" under loads of artificial studio effects.
Ultimately what I dislike about Gorgoroth is that they are extremely money minded and have built their entire fanbase through faux "satanic" gimmickry, merchandising, marketing, networking with labels, touring with any and all takers, etc.
They have disgraced an entire music genre for mainstream exposure and greed. Rockstar attitudes and aspirations are not welcome in underground metal, especially not in black metal.
Gorgoroth band members try to portray themselves as some type of front runners, vanguards of "true black metal", when they are just merely groupies, if that, of the metal genre.
Under the Sign of Hell is a overproduced album which conveys no emotion and nothing beyond the abundant superficiality that you find in today's pop music.
Avoid the plagiarized bullshit known as Under the Sign of Hell.
Under the Sign of Hell score: 0/100.
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