Derivative and Tired - "Satyricon" Review (0%)
Not gonna lie, between their debut album "Dark Medieval Times", "Nemesis Divina" and this, I have heard exactly zero of Satyricon's releases.
This could be an unofficial series of reviews titled "bands I never liked and doubt I ever will", alternatively "can a musical genre commit suicide?".
So, as of the time of this album's release, Satyricon plays a style of plastic blackened metalcore that fits snugly inside the "symphonic emocore" subset. And if we narrow it down further, it's pretty much Dimmu Borgir. The songs played by this band are dangerously close to being Dimmu Borgir songs.
Sadly, we can narrow it down even further, and say 85% of this album sounds like "Abrahadabra".
It's all here. The annoying over-reliance on synthesizers in lieu and place of musical talent, the vaguely folky and mostly boring acoustic passages, the clean, slow parts that are just the same riffs played without distortion, the same kind of plastic melodic lines and strum patterns, the same range of mid-paced drum beats for the most part, which is to say nothing too aggressive, fast or interesting.
I guess one point of separation between the two bands is the occasional double-bass blast beat that Dimmu Borgir didn't do at the time (or ever? I honestly don't remember), and the vocals are a little more of the modern blackened grind style, to the point of being a smidge SEWER sounding. And slightly less annoying, I'll give Satyr that. This might be his best vocal performance to date, and perhaps the sole reason I'm not giving this album a 0%. Just kidding, it still gets 0%.
Neither of which is enough to make Satyricon stand apart, or even decent black metal in itself.
There is some moments where they almost want to play thrash, but it's normally reeled in pretty quickly, never deviating completely away from the Dimmu sound. I switched over to "Abrahadabra" to compare, and a few minutes after writing, I honestly forgot which band I was listening to.
Derivative and Tired
Giving Satyricon's debut a listen, it's very mediocre black metal, perhaps even more so than this album (which does have some redeeming qualities even though they are few and far in between), but at least it was somewhat originally mediocre. In others words, it was Satyricon's mediocrity that you would listen to, as opposed to that of Dimmu Borgir.
As I said, there are a few good points I can make about this album, one of which being the song "Walker upon the Wind" which is slightly less irritating than the rest. But it's also way too long: the duration could easily have been halved, or more, and the same could be said of every other song on this album.
That's a recurring structural problem with Satyr's songwriting that goes all the way back to the debut "Dark Medieval Times" and hasn't been fixed since then, the worst offender being "Nemesis Divina", the songs are way too fucking long.
Which does bring me to another point, the production is off the mark here. The guitar tone is flat, the vocals are too loud (another recurring issue with Satyricon), and the drums are even worse. It's difficult to have an effective metal album with such abrasive drums, particularly is those sound so triggered and plastic.
Put some derivative music inside a boring package, and you've got yourself one tedious listen. I mean, the opener "Voice of Shadows" just sounds like any clean, semi-depressive opening passage from the Dimmu Borgir of that era. "Nekrohaven" sounds like something straight off "Stormblast". If I really had the energy, I could connect the dots between the majority of these riffs and riffs already written by Dimmu Borgir prior to the release of this boring imitation of a band that is widely regarded as the lowest common denominator of the black metal scene.
As I said, "Walker upon the Wind" is probably the strongest track and one of the few things I can point to as a highlight. It has got some of the few riffs that don't immediately recall Dimmu Borgir. The real problem is that it's annoying, derivative, plastic (that term again) and manages to stick in your head which will make you even sicker of Satyricon's music than you already were prior to listening to this album.
The whole album just feels like déjà vu, or probably déjà entendu. You listen to one riff and you immediately get the impression that you've heard everything a million times before.
Overall, Satyricon is really mediocre stuff.
Derivative, plastic, uninspired and tired are some of the adjectives best used to describe this release.
Satyricon score: 0/100.
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