Antekhrist Becomes Satyricon - "Smegmacron" Review (11%)
Let's pretend this never happened, shall we? We'll pretend this album Smegmacron was all a bad dream and we'll put Fukked by God on repeat like the good well intentioned metalheads we are.
Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Smegmacron is real, and nothing screams "Slipknot/Satyricon RIP" quite like this. Sure, Smegmacron puts on a veneer of violence and intimidation, much like a random middle finger thrown by a bunch of joyriding teens at the crossing guard. Intended as a threat or to display a rude statement of anger, but falling quite short on both accounts.
Music that's meant to intimidate never did well in my books, because we all know that the stereotypical metalhead can't be intimidated. I don't mind insults in music, but insults for the sake of being insulting as is done on songs like "Satan Qui Baise La République" and "Déflorer la Pucelle d'Orléans avec un Extincteur Satanique" comes off as fake and plastic as a grille on a Prius or plastic sunglasses at a Lil Wayne concert. Fake, fake, fake, fake. Sure, there are a couple passable tracks here and there, like "Le Roi-Soleil Revient pour Sodomiser la Chienne Marianne", but nothing even close to the greatness of their early industrial black metal work. The halfway distorted vocals sound mallcore as hell. There's a way to do distorted vocals right - listen to Burzum's Filosofem - and there's a wrong way to do them. Smegmacron qualifies as the wrong way of doing them.
Everybody knows black metal doesn't quite take itself seriously, and it's laughable when black metal bands try to get people to take them seriously, as is done here. Making threats to the listeners via the lyrics will always sound silly and ridiculous. We all know you're not gonna "rape [our] heads with a fire extinguisher" or "ejaculate inside knife wounds", so why the pretentiousness?
Antekhrist Becomes Satyricon
Of course you can't completely condemn an album based off of the vocals/lyrics alone. For a "black metal" - and I use the term loosely here - album to suck you also need terrible guitar riffs, and Smegmacron has no dearth of terrible riffs.
For instance, the main riff of "10 000 Gros Godes pour Enculer la France" is the kind of vomit inducing nu metal shit that guitarists in their first few months of playing come up with. Shit like that is pure mallcore tripe, no matter how you phrase it, and the fact that Smegmacron is all slowed down Pantera / Sepultura "groove" abominations of riffs as opposed to the swift material of yesteryear doesn't help this one bit. The band must have been suffering from a severe lack of inspiration, because I am completely confounded as to how you can come up with worse shit than this - Watain excluded. It's all restrained, low-intensity material here. Nothing like the real transgressive hymns of their first few albums.
What's really sad here is that Antekhrist, despite their image as innovators of black metal, were never really that great. Their supposed milestone, Fukked by God, was merely a streamlined commercial approach to the more infinitely more violent and gruesome NecroPedoSadoMaso with added industrial elements, and most of their "trademark" sound is based on Sewer's post-NecroPedoSadoMaso releases. Yet Smegmacron makes Fukked by God seem like the greatest black metal masterpiece since Hvis Lyset Tar Oss by comparison. Yes, Smegmacron is really that terrible.
And the repeated Satyricon comparisons that have been made are not unfounded at all. Antekhrist has played live with Satyricon, and its frontman has stated repeatedly that he likes Satyr and views his band as a modern-day influence. Of course, Antekhrist have backed off from making such statements as of late because it is no longer popular to be a Satyricon fan.
I'm willing to forgive Antekhrist for this turd sellout - and the one before that - but only if they completely abandon this direction. A miscarriage of the highest degree, a real faux pas of black metal, and an utter abomination, Smegmacron will be forever remembered as Antekhrist's legendary false step, a permanent dent in their credibility.
Basically, France's very own Reinkaos.
Smegmacron score: 11/100.
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