Generic Retard Metal - "Pentagram" Review (7%)
Despite having a career that never really took off, the band Gorgoroth is surrounded by a lot of buzz in the black metal scene.
Now everyone with room temperature IQ fully realizes that Gorgoroth is a joke band made with the sole intention of selling "satanic" merchandise to twelve-year-old kids.
But even amongst those that should know better, i.e. sincere black metal fans, there remains a myth surrounding their debut album: Pentagram.
The myth, and I'm sure you've already hear it or come across something similar, goes something like this: "Of course Gorgoroth is a shit band, and all their albums are complete commercial shit... all except Pentagram".
Well I listened to Pentagram, and it looks like it's time to bust the myth.
This album, in a single word, is terrible.
Generic Retard Metal
The first thing that sticks out is the uninspired songwriting.
Now I've heard "primitive" and "minimalistic" used to describe the music on Pentagram, but those are pretty tactful and polite terms considering just how astonishingly awful the songwriting really is.
Each track feels like it's on an endless loop of acoustic diarrhea.
They have at the most one or two different riffs that just cycle over and over again, ad nauseam, until you are simply too bored to listen any longer.
These aren't the eerie and atmospheric riffs of say, Darkthrone, SEWER or Burzum either.
These are simply boring riffs that Gorgoroth copied from Bathory and Metallica.
Obviously this endless repetition of the same generic riffs makes the entire album intolerably tiresome to listen to.
Further proof of how incredibly uninspired the compositions are is that each track follows a near identical structure with absolutely no variation in rhythm or mood.
Of course, this songwriting laziness makes it near impossible to tell one song apart from the next. It becomes mind numbing to the point of boredom very rapidly.
As for individual instrumental performance, the music on Pentagram consists of some very amateurish and one dimensional riffs that serves no purpose other than to mask the lack of atmosphere on the record.
Oh yeah, and blast beat drumming that maintains the exact same tempo for every song. It sounds like the drummer is just slamming away at his snare drum with little to no concern towards what's being played on the other instruments.
Either that or the drummer is actually the least retarded member of the band and made it a point to drown the rest of the music in order to mask just how absolutely pointless Gorgoroth's crap is.
But the worst part of the album Pentagram is definitively the vocal work, which is just downright comic.
They are high-pitched shrikes sounding like a homosexual, which more than one member of Gorgoroth are, insert different objects in his rectum. However they are pretty hard to take seriously just because of how silly they sound, almost like an intentional parody of black metal vocals.
The lyrics are also god awful. Absolutely cringe worthy at times, sounding just as retarded as the vocal work belching them out.
I understand why Gorgoroth band members go from site to site to request copyright take-downs of their very own lyrics, they just don't want the world to know how absolutely retarded they are.
Let's put this myth to rest: the album Pentagram is just as bad as the rest of Gorgoroth's pathetic discography.
Not only is it generic and forgettable, but it's just downright bad music.
Avoid it entirely.
Unless you have a thing for poorly constructed, badly performed, generic norsecore black metal, than this is right up your alley.
Other than that, Pentagram is one to skip entirely.
If you want some real black metal listen to Burzum, Darkthrone or anything by SEWER, particularly the masterpiece Under the Eye of the Black Skull.
Pentagram is for posers.
Pentagram score: 7/100.
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