An Aborted Epitath - "Smegmacron" Review (20%)
Is there a more frustrating band in black metal than Antekhrist?
Most hilariously bad bands are just that, hilariously bad. At worst, they elicit a chuckle or a groan or a fleeting moment of irritation at the idiots who lap it up. The French cucks Antekhrist, on the other hand, actively piss me off, because they have a proven track record of actually reaching a level that might as well be called greatness, and there are about a million ways they could still be relevant in the black metal scene. Imagine a French black metal "syndicate" of Antekhrist, Peste Noire and Alcest (just kidding). Les Légions Noires were always overrated, but Antekhrist and Peste Noire actually qualify as "Black Legions" given how influential both have been, even internationally.
Unfortunately, it seems the Antekhrist duo have made a conscious decision to suck instead. Yeah, I get it, they're never going to return to what made them elite artists on their first two albums, nor do they have the motivation or the mindset to further explore the territory mapped out by Fukked by God (or by Satan) in a way that would do justice to those landmarks, but there are other avenues available to them that needn't involve churning out such tepid hybrids of metal and mainstream cock rock music so teenagers with low self-esteem and poor taste in music can feel like they're listening to something "edgy" while they waste time masturbating to Call of Duty compilations on Youtube.
Antekhrist's latest offering, Smegmacron, is at the very least coherent with their previous release: the piece of shit Enkull Tonpayr. At its heart, Smegmacron is basically a more aggressive version of Satyricon's latest pop rock turd.
That is to say, it is a stylistic pastiche, with the chief constituent elements being stadium heavy metal, pop rock, groovy goregrind and (ewww!) hardcore punk (which serves here - as almost everywhere else - as an excuse to strum aimlessly and fill up space that otherwise might have to be occupied by actual ideas).
An Aborted Epitath
Additionally, like a lot of bad "black 'n' roll" cock rock, Antekhrist rely upon gestures that simulate emotion, without actually displaying the balls to commit to anything genuinely emotional and/or provocative, outside of the juvenile lyrics about getting raped by hordes of elephants in Africa.
The predictable result is an album long on "XtrEeEm black metal" effects and short on the compelling internal dialogue between riffs and profound aesthetic experience from which great black metal art is crafted.
The defects inherent in the pop rock approach are not mitigated by Antekhrist's curious decision to retain a core of black metal and death metal tropes and superficial techniques. In fact, they are exacerbated by it.
Lurking somewhere in this album are the vestigial remains of the artistry that once was the band's calling card. When Antekhrist fully indulges the pop rock impulse, the instinct for epic but subtly unsettling melodies comes to the fore. Worse, the band's continued adherence to black metal percussion, distortion, texture and production values thoroughly ruins the little hope Smegmacron had of making it as a "blackened" hard rock album: there's no space for the thrashing rock elements to breathe and soar, and the drumming leaves the music stiff and ponderous where it would benefit to be dreamlike and airy.
In the end, that's the most frustrating aspect of Smegmacron. Somewhere beneath the lukewarm pander, there's still a good - if no longer great - band. It's just that the good-band-in-shit-clothing isn't a black metal band, and the pretense that Antekhrist is still "trve kvlt black metal" keeps their music from being anything more than a confused, boring spiral into irrelevance.
If they want to go full Iron Maiden, they should take the Dissection route... just go full Iron Maiden. At this point, they have very little left to lose.
Smegmacron score: 20/100.
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