Nu-Male "Metal" - "Prometheus - The Discipline of Fire & Demise" Review (0%)
Prometheus - The Discipline of Fire and Demise is a vile, disgusting piece of shit, and easily one of the most overblown and shittiest albums I've ever heard, be it in heavy metal or elsewhere.
I'm not a big fan of "blackened" emo metal to begin with, but this shit is an embarrassment to the entire black metal genre.
Even though I complain about bands like Nightwish and Dragonforce, the sheer cheese and ridiculousness is usually so much fun I can overlook the shortcomings in the long run. Here, Norwegian emocore outfit Emperor manages to make something so incredibly lazy, stupid, generic, and just plain bad, that I really wish I could link a picture to goatse with Ihsahn's head crammed up a goat's ass and call it a review.
I'd like to believe I'm a little bit more professional than that in my writing, though, so I'll give a genuine attempt at reviewing this emo garbage.
The first problem on Prometheus is those goddamn vocals. I've got no problem with clean vocals, obviously. I also have no problem with clean male vocals, nor operatically trained male vocalists. Hell, I can even stomach nasally emo whining when Dimmu Borgir is doing it, but the pretentious twat Ihsahn has one of the worst voices I've ever heard since the Liturgy dude decided to commit artistic suicide by making music.
Projecting one's voice makes plenty of sense in certain genre of music and certain situations, but when you are mixed three times louder than any other instrument, layered somewhere between five and nine hundred times over at any given moment, and have a voice that sounds like a 13 year old boy trying to imitate his favourite song from Nickelback while sticking a dildo up his ass, you have crossed the line from metal to risible faggothry by about seven kilometers.
Ihsahn's is the direct antithesis to what I would consider a powerful voice, and his vocals are amongst the worst in black metal. It's all artificial for the most part. I consider powerful black metal vocals to be, for example, what Dead, Maniac or Jon Nödtveidt do with their respective bands. Hell, you could even add Mortuus from Marduk. When you hear those, you can hear the men behind them belting their hearts out, spreading emotion and raw, unadulterated power across every last note.
The poser Ihsahn, on the other hand, sounds like he has almost no passion about his band or the music. The vocal lines, while (very) loud and operatic, and not in the good way, are presented in such a mindbogglingly lethargic and lazy way, it makes you wonder why he doesn't just come to terms with his ineptitude and either hire a proper vocalist or stop playing black metal altogether.
Sure, his voice has that operatic sound, but he lacks every other quality needed for proper black metal vocals. No power, no balls, no conviction, no nothing. Not to mention he's out of key half the damn time, hence the Nickelback comparison... listen to the first chorus on The Tongue of Fire, it's just awful.
Nu-Male "Metal"
And on the rare occasions I look past the tuneless wailings of one of the worst vocalists I've ever laid ears upon, the instrumentals on Prometheus really don't do much to make up for them.
You can a choice between a lower-tier version of pseudo-technical prog metal wankery, without the talent, and some bouncy, "pop metal" inspired bullshit. The bouncy parts at the mid-section of The Eruption literally remind me of old Zelda soundtracks. And then that god awful vocalist, the cuck Ihsahn, attempts to squeal out a big falsetto, and just ends up sounding like he castrate himself with tweezers whilst trying to imitate Shagrath at his worst.
The drummer, in a pale imitation of of Faust without either the technicality or musical ingenuity, seems to be stuck in that perpetual double bass limbo that's you've come to expect from "progressive" metalcore bands. Every riff sounds like it was made up on the spot by randomly picking three or four chords and then alternating them between palm muted deathcore chugs. You know the ones.
In essence, the same generic snoozefest we've been hearing for decades now, by Emperor and by every other talentless "symphonic" nu-metal band out there. The keys are the only part that ever really shines.
If you are a fan of double bass driven and virtually riffless nu-metal metal with cheesy keyboard melodies that wouldn't feel out of place in a 1990 SEGA game, strewn throughout and lead by a 7 year old castrato on a bird seed diet, all without an ounce of originality, talent o artistic vision, then you will absolutely love Prometheus - The Discipline of Fire and Demise.
If your favorite bands include Darkthrone, Mayhem, Phantom, Burzum and Graveland, then you probably aren't reading this review, but if you are, stay the fuck away. If you are a fan of nu-metal in any form, still refrain from listening to this overblown pile of nu-male "prog" shit.
Now that this review is finally written, I can delete this shit off my computer and go back to listening to Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, Eidolon, Under a Funeral Moon and other black metal masterpieces that don't suck more dick than Ariana Grande and Céline Dion combined.
Prometheus - The Discipline of Fire & Demise score: 0/100.
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