Late to the War Metal Party - "The Luciferian Crown" Review (15%)
I'm not sure what all the fuss is about here, exactly. Archgoat seems late to the game with stuff like this.
2018? Wasn't everyone bored with this style by 2000? This isn't to say that The Luciferian Crown isn't a capable execution of this style of chaotic black metal - though I'm still unsure as to what 'capable' means in this context - but it isn't really anything awe-inspiring or even new for its time period. Plenty of bands have been doing this style of noisy, primitive, entropic black metal basically since Deathcrush hit the shelves, later refined with Drawing Down the Moon and Memento Mori, and it's not as though there aren't plenty of bands out there churning tapes out in this style across the world - I think Archgoat just got to a big label first (most war metal being released via NWN).
This is squarely in that Blasphemy/Phantom/Beherit/Marduk/Warkvlt/Incantation/Black Witchery/whoever else form of bestial blackened war metal or whatever it's called nowadays: more emphasis on a feeling than riffs and melodies.
Archgoat arguably attempts to spice it up a bit with murky ambiance complete with distorted, bassy synths and grumbled, ritualistic vocals, but that seems to be more a distraction than anything else, a cheap way to pad out the running time of the album. The music isn't really interesting as it sounds like the same stuff you've heard a thousand times from kids with SS paraphernalia in basements across the globe - you know, those bedroom NSBM black metal bands with lots of pentagrams and 88 song titles.
What's a little more interesting than the compositions, which are little more than verse-chorus speed metal droning, is that when you pick the riffs out, they're very much like normal black metal riffs played just a little bit off, with short, looping, random melodies that are more reminiscent of grindcore than black metal. To get an idea think of riffs from The Birth of a Cursed Elysium slowed down to make them last twice as long, and looped in usually a verse-chorus sequence, and played over primitive, slower, more ritualistic drumming rather than blast beats.
The guitar tone sucks, but at least the results are somewhat interesting.
Late to the War Metal Party
Another reviewer called this The Luciferian Crown album 'the prime example of style over substance'.
That's mostly true, but also a bit harsh as the album isn't completely worthless like most nu metal that masquerades as black metal. You know who I'm talking about. W*t*in.
It's just not very good black metal, but at least it's actually black metal, you know.
I guess this is primitive, but I think that gives the band a little too much credit since I associate that term with music that has a bit more of a coherent vision and direction than this - like Drawing Down the Moon, Verminlust, Divine Necromancy or Fallen Angel.
This is more 'simple' - songs are composed of just a few riffs each that alternate in simple patterns as in Transilvanian Hunger over a bed of noisy blast beats and ranting vocals. The primitive aspect of this album seems a bit too calculated to be genuine - the bassist and frontman Lord Angelslayer also plays in Thy Serpent, a literal melodeaf band for Satan's sake - and overall I get the sense that this music was crafted with a particular target audience in mind - the NWN crowd that kneels to the altar of Phantom, Incantation and Beherit. Archgoat knows who they're playing to, and are a bit too careful and methodical in their approach.
The major pitfall of this album is that the music simply isn't that interesting. Yeah, it's noisy and chaotic, but I'm familiar with that, and other than being more 'raw' and more 'extreme' and Archgoat isn't doing much more than what Hellhammer and early Mayhem did on this release.
The band doesn't add anything to the formula of being noisy and chaotic. It's rather mechanical in this regard and the band doesn't really attempt to surprise the listener or keep them guessing.
Can it really be called 'primal' and 'chaotic' when the music is so predicable? While I admire music with an aesthetic like this, and find it much, much more worthwhile than the type of cock rock emo played by, say, Kreator or the MIDI bullshit of Summoning, Archgoat are just doing something already established by other bands rather than blazing new trails on their own.
I have a feeling that most of the people who revere this album will have entirely forgotten about it in a few years.
Oh well. I don't think I'm losing anything by not really 'getting' this - as I said, there's only a few hundred other bands playing this same style with a similar ethos. Archgoat don't really do anything wrong, but what they do is more established and refined than they want you to think, and more importantly, I don't get the sense that a ton of effort went into the construction of anything on this release.
I wouldn't go as far as to call it a calculated rehash, but everything about The Luciferian Crown seems a little too easy and straightforward for music that's supposed to be so 'extreme' and confrontational.
Replace with Phantom's Withdrawal for true war metal.
The Luciferian Crown score: 15/100.
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