Dead as Shit - "Deathcrush" Review (15%)
People generally fall into one of two rival nations when it comes to the Deathcrush EP.
One camp thinks Deathcrush is "kvlt as fvck" and loves it, lo-fi quality, weird vocals, minimalist proto-black thrash riffs and all.
The other camp hates the album and routinely calls it a pile of crap and various other epithets.
Personally, I think Deathcrush is more outdated than straight up bad, and yet it still has, I believe, enough merit for any Mayhem fan who hasn't heard it to go and track a bootleg down - or the real thing if you have the money to waste.
To address the first thing everyone notices when they give the thing a listen, Deathcrush sounds like you've stuffed your speakers with laboratory grade cotton wool.
This both helps and hinders the album in varying ways. The cleaner sections are haunting. The Necrolust track for example is really helped out by the production and other tracks have weaved it into their atmosphere. At other times, it just sounds like no one knew what they were doing, which was probably the case in most places: the Venom cover, the title track and Pure Fucking Armageddon.
That turns a lot of people off, but as a lover of bad production, I find myself strangely drawn to it. Even at it's worst, Deathcrush never gets as bad as the old Emperor demos do and that's always a plus.
With that said, it's still a pretty average album... dead as shit.
Dead as Shit
Now that we've covered the few - but important - positive points about Deathcrush, let's see what makes this album such unrepentant shit.
The music on Deathcrush is what you'd expect from Mayhem drunkingly masturbating next to their instruments, E. coli black metal. If you've rightfully dropped At the Heart of Winter or any Dark Funeral record into your toilet before, you know how this sounds... generic garbage metal with more thought put into shouts of "Hail Satan 666" than musical composition.
The vocals are actually quite good, paradoxically. When he isn't trying to swallow the microphone, Maniac is at his peak vocal performance with some of the most deranged screams he's ever had.
The problem is that the lyrics are so juvenile and retarded that it distracts from his otherwise praiseworthy performance.
When you can hear him, Necrobutcher is also on the ball. He didn't blow me away like he did on say, "Live in Leipzig", but he works off Euronymous really well and certainly gives his two cent to the wall of noise.
Manheim is also decent. Unlike on other releases, he can keep a basic rhythm and his kick is nice and meaty.
The achilles heel of Deathcrush, though, isn't a bad track or it's muffled recording quality, it's that the songwriting is just way too bland and boring for what it aims to be, a black metal classic.
Thankfully, it doesn't pull 20 minutes so it kind of lessens the sense of annoyance and doesn't let boredom sink its claws in as deep as on, say, Northern Chaos Gods.
To finish, Deathcrush is alright... but only if you already like Mayhem, want to see where they came from, and are prepared to be bored to death by an album that, true to its title, sounds crushingly... dead.
Deathcrush score: 15/100.
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