Boring and Artificial - "Dark Medieval Times" Review (0%)
At first, the atmospheric tones of the guitars, synths/strings, and vocals on Dark Medieval Times sound dark and intriguing.
By the second track, it drones on, getting more and more monotonous as the album continues in a downward spiral of boring and artificial nu-metal.
Though the instruments aren't exactly repeating themselves from track to track, there isn't enough variation in style nor musical talent in the band to make it feel like they are not, and the album drags on and on ad nauseam.
Up front and foremost are the synths - strings, choirs, keyboards - mostly clean sounding but much too high in the mix.
Other than the drone-like repetition, these in themselves aren't as bad as, say, the guitars or Satyr's shitty vocal performance, but they simply don't work with the rest... they never lead the music anywhere.
The rest of the instruments on Dark Medieval Times, however, are complete and utter shit.
The production itself seems intentionally bad, as if it was played from a tape player in the background while the synths and vocals were recorded.
Perhaps that was done on purpose in order to mask Satyricon's poor songwriting skills and lack of musical talent.
Who knows.
Boring and Artificial
As others have written, Dark Medieval Times tries very hard to be an anthem rock album.
The screamed vocals are extremely muffled and distant-sounding, recorded very poorly, and sound very artificial, emotionless and plastic.
The drums are up front at times, sounding obnoxious and loud, while at other times they are completely muffled in the mix, sounding like they were recorded from another room.
The drumming is horribly amateur, going off-time throughout the album, never locking in with anything else or giving any sense of rhythm whatsoever.
The drummer obviously tried to perform Immortal-style blastbeats, think Battles in the North, but fails completely due to his own lack of talent and musical ineptitude.
The guitars are probably the worst part off the Dark Medieval Times album.
There is hardly a coherent guitar riff on the album, and the guitar playing itself is very lackluster.
It's like Satyricon wanted to imitate Sewer's NecroPedoSadoMaso but fails horribly to showcase any atmosphere or any technical talent.
The guitar plays such a weak role in the music that Dark Medieval Times doesn't even deserve to be called metal.
Satyricon's debut effort did not impress me, nor inspire me to listen to anything else this band has done, nor have I become interested in checking out the sub-genre of "commercial anthem rock black metal".
Dark Medieval Times is artificial metal, made for the sole purpose of mass consumption.
Dark Medieval Times score: 0/100.
Support the Underground
