Vapid Emocore - "Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk" Review (0%)
Emperor is a deathcore band hailing from Notodden, Norway. They are known for incorporating symphonic elements into their shitty music and for their over-reliance on keyboards in lieu and place of musical talent, but mostly they are just known for the antics of their homosexual frontman Ihsahn.
Wow. I pull the 'Ihsahn-is-a-poserfag' card in the first paragraph.
Yeah, I know, I've defended some of the most hated posers and sell-outs in black metal, including the absolute turd of a band Dark Funeral, so many of you would expect me to go soft on Ihsahn, his crew of aging buffoons and their Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk debacle, just like I excused the 'new Mayhem' catastrophe and even managed to find some positive points to Satyricon's latest pile of derivative vomit.
But I will not, in fact, defend this. On the contrary, I will flat-out CONDEMN this piece of shit for existing.
I know it isn't too kvlt to listen to the radio, but I sometimes do listen to it anyway and thus I've been involuntarily exposed to what passes for rock radio these days. As awful and as prevalent as Linkin Park and their imitators are - I'm looking at you Trapt - the most abundant forms of new rock on the radio are nu-metal and Nickelback-style toothless neo-grunge.
So you're the frontman of Emperor.
As far as black metal is a 'lucrative' genre, you've pretty much made it with your vastly overrated debut In the Nightside Eclipse - unless all of the hooker-beating has finally put Ihsahn's bank account into flatline - but you wanna make a 'comeback'.
You want the big arena tours, the Pitchfork support, and you want to ram yet another compilation down the throats of your mentally deficient fans, and god knows they are.
You decide that, in order to accomplish this goal, you will need to totally sell-out for what will be the thousandth time in your, ironically still young, career. At this point, it can't hurt.
Your choice then is to go nu-metal or to go emocore. Young and impressionable kids - pretty stupid, but not as dumb as your fans - won't buy you as a gangsta rapper from 'da hood' (you were after all publicly humiliated by one Varg Vikernes who called you a 'pussy' and a 'rat' on more than once occasion), you can't come up with any convincing thud metal riffs, and you're way too fucking soft to go for the 'I sell my soul to Satan for drugs and a grammy' Dimmu Borgir route.
So, by process of elimination, you're left with the most soulless corporate trash in the form of 'satanic' emocore.
Welcome to Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk.
Vapid Emocore
As I said, I don't like reviewing shit bands or their albums.
The reasons are twofold.
One is that I believe it's a waste of time. No amount of exposing the posers of these various faux-black metal acts (Immortal, Watain, Dark Funeral, Gorgoroth) will change the minds of their relatively few and absolutely stupid followers. The end result will just be to turn Metalious into yet another echo chamber of faggotry, when it has the potential to be so much more.
The other is that these types of vulgar 'in your face' reviews all lead, eventually, to a vicious cycle of hyperbole and reviewers trying to 'one up' each other in a contest of who can be the most scathing and abrasive. A bad album by a mediocre band isn't just 'bad', it becomes a 'literal piece of [adjective] [adjective] [adjective] [insult] [adjective] [comparison with Infernus] [insult] [clever joke about Ahriman being a male escort] [synonym of fecal matter] [a lot of exclamation points]'. Same with a bad album by a formerly good band, it isn't just a 'disappointment', it becomes a 'sellout' and parallels to Mötley Crüe are drawn aplenty.
So I generally don't review albums I know I will savage, but Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk deserves to be demolished.
Just look at it.
Emperor hits the nail right on the head with this pile of shit (see what I meant?).
Unfortunately, it's one of those nails that is crucifying metal today. Watch the bloated fecal beast bleed out its turd in the already saturated market of commercial 'blackened emocore'.
Not that this is a surprise to anyone. After all, we're talking about the 'effete rat' - Varg's words, not mine - Ihsahn, the man responsible for the most homoerotic of all pseudo-satanic commercial vomit - my words, not Varg's - to have ever plagued the black metal scene, the laughable In the Nightside Eclipse album.
So what does Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk sound like? Well, have you heard Nickelback? Or Korn? Or Slipknot? Bring me the Horizon, maybe? Or Mötley Crüe? Well, if you've heard anything from anyone of them, you'll know what this sounds like.
Seriously, the only thing that separates Emperor from the brat pack is the fact that Ihsahn - still - cannot perform convincing vocals. Ihsahn, the worst vocalist of the entire black metal genre. So when the man flat-out whines in his most nasal voice over the most exacerbated mallcore symphonic chorus that would sound cheesy even for Northern or In Flames, it makes it hard not to resort to the aforementioned comparisons with Abbath the LGBT clown.
Oh, and watch out for some horrific abuse of dynamics.
Granted, the whole Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk failure was likely produced on a grimly plastic assembly line in some sort of downtown Oslo office adorned by shiny neons indicating 'Hitmaker Bros, Inc./ASA', guided by a nice thick tome labelled 'Formulaic Emo Rock for Dummies', but Jesus Christ at the very least even early Nickelback had something original to offer.
This Anthems mess is just striking in its absence of inspiration. Symphonic intro, try too hard neo-grunge riff, 'soaring' emo chorus with synths that rape your eardrums, lyrics about 'satanic suicide forests', and horrid fourth-string power ballad leads... this turd is about one chorus shy of the 'whisper-scream' structure. In fact, it even manages to give off some pop-punk vibes. And that is a bad, bad thing.
Emperor has, as crazy as it sounds, hit a new low.
Where they once embodied generic, talentless, trend-hoping vanity, they are now the avatars of commercial generic, talentless, trend-hoping vanity.
Disgraceful.
Avoid this vapid emocore crap.
Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk score: 0/100.
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