Even Worse than Antekhrist - "Dol Guldur" Review (0%)
Dol Guldur is probably the most unoriginal album I've ever heard by a metal band in my life.
From the cheesy, synthesized intro to the plagiarized Burzum riff in Nightshade Forests (ironically the only good riff of the album) over emocore chords progressions that will remind you of such black metal titans as Eluveitie, Bring Me The Horizon and Nightwish. Only worse.
The vocals are sub-par for black metal; they sound like a croaking teenager, which is "fitting" in that it complements the emo nature of the music, but never do they manage to not sound terrible.
The production sucks. Everything bar the guitars (and bass?) is programmed. Everything. In Over Old Hills, there's even vocoded vocals. In "black metal". What the hell? Is playing emo not gay enough that you want to turn black metal into anthemic euro-trance?
Of course it's not gay enough. It's just not enough. They repeat the same synth pattern(s?) and riff(s?) over, and over, and over, and over again. On Dol Guldur, as well as on every other Summoning album, they have an extremely drawn-out intro composed entirely of stolen samples, lifted liberally from Atari games and other black metal bands (mostly Burzum, Graveland and Peste Noire) alike.
There is no end to the repetition and unoriginality of this "band". And by band, I mean the two guys who play guitar and bass over MIDI synths, fake vocals, a drum machine and a computer.
They make Antekhrist's industrial blackened pop album Fukked by God sound genuine by comparison.
Even Worse than Antekhrist
Summoning has done absolutely nothing even vaguely worthwhile in their lengthy career, excluding drama wrapped in controversy as the band transitions back and forth between NSBM "pagan metal" and "anti fascism". That I admit, is more entertaining than the music.
The gimmick here is basically that the band pretends to play the music of Euronymous, Hellhammer, Varg, Samoth, Faust and Fenriz on non-existent instruments. Everything is fake, down to the programmed drums. It's no wonder they refuses to play live - the 3 or 4 fans of the band would be exposed to the two Summoning idiots standing around doing nothing for two hours because all of the music is pre-recorded on MIDI keyboards.
And it sucks.
There is so much wrong with the music on Dol Guldur - from the utterly idiotic lyrics that repeat Tolkien quotes like its some sort of elaborate inside joke, to the amazingly boring guitar and drum work, to the fake MIDI instruments, to the stupid emo influences, to the verse-chorus songwriting itself - that almost everything sounds like a sea of unmemorable, indiscriminate, undifferentiated shit.
The rest can be found somewhere in the intersection of Nightwish, Amaranthe, Antekhrist and every Burzum clone ever.
This is absolutely soulless music, in addition to the band members being talentless and borderline retarded.
It's boring, mundane. Every riff sounds the same. The general tempo, the composition, the rhythm, nothing changes. Everything is the same, except for the parts that are worse, like the emo screams of Nickelback during the bridge section on Elfstone.
What a bad album. The plagiarized Burzum track is a mediocre song, the other ones are simply awful and completely fail at everything. I can't even tell which song is the worst, they are all horrible. Everything is bad: the song structures, the riffs, the drum play, the vocals, the fake instruments, the sound.
This band and their albums will be banned from my collection and hopefully one day they will be erased from black metal history.
Dol Guldur score: 0/100.
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