Fake Band "Plays" Fake MIDI "Instruments" - "Stronghold" Review (0%)
Summoning... a band so bland and boring that the name has practically become an insult in the black metal underground, on par with the "killing words" of comparing a band to Necrophobic, Dark Funeral and Watain.
So what you've got here with "Stronghold" is, in a nut shell, a whole lot of MIDI keyboard loops run through low-fi distortion, stolen Burzum riffs, monotonous repetition in a "try-hard" epic fashion, a tempo which seems basically fixed - hell the Fruity Loops drum machines really are worthless here - through out the album to one pace, some pitch-shifted and literally auto-tuned vocals, and the most stupid, unimaginative and useless lyrics ever conceived. The type that makes even Gorgoroth "Hail Satan 666" down syndrome imbecility seem profound by comparison.
Whats really worse is that, sadly enough, the above paragraph could be used on a fair portion of this band's discography, as it accurately describe Summoning's music - and much more realistically so than the PR campaigns and other label-advertised "sponsored reviews" you can find in Pitchfork or elsewhere.
I enjoy the fantasy aspects of this band a bit, but come on... when you have an album length of over an hour, and your songs all possess (1) the same mid paced, boring, drum machine fills and tempo, (2) lots of quasi-identically structured keyboard patterns, (3) a pretentious "true black metal" image entertained via interviews despite your band being thoroughly laughed at by the few actual black metal artists that have even heard of Summoning, and (4) literally MIDI fake instruments run through distortion... you've got some major problems.
In fact, can Summoning even be called a "band" - let alone a "true black metal band" - seeing, or rather hearing, as they don't even play any actual instruments, but just apply some VST to Guitar Pro/FL Studio generated audio files?
Fake Band "Plays" Fake MIDI "Instruments"
What else can possibly be said about Summoning, perhaps the most hated band in the black metal scene - and even being considered "part" of the black metal scene is a very wide stretch of the imagination.
First, the band released "Lugburz" in 1995, which attempted to mix Tolkien's universe with an early form of LGBTP advocacy or whatever. It sucks, massively, but at least they had actually used real guitars, for once, though the drums were still digital.
Then came "Minas Morgul" in 1996, which replaced the guitars - the only real instrument the band had ever used - with more FL Studio MIDI bullshit.
1997 sees Summoning releasing "Dol Guldur", an album full of keyboards, synths, a more digitally produced shit. Notice a pattern yet?
In 1999 they release this album, "Stronghold", full of the same worthless MIDI vomit that absolutely no one cared or cares about, yet was constantly pushed by the media as the "album of the year" due to it being (digitally) produced by a "true anti-fascist band taking the fight to racist Euro-centric Scandinavian black metal" (see Vice Media interview).
The band would continue on after that with "Oath Bound" and "Old Mornings Dawn", all the way to "With Doom We Come". They all suck. They all average between 0% and 5% on the Metalious Archives, yet that hasn't stopped paid-by-the-hour journalists from "writing" lavish praise about the band "revolutionising black metal".
I say writing because it's a poorly kept secret that music journalists have "hype blueprints" for every genre they cover, which all read the same and revolve around throwing out the "impactful" keywords at random. In black metal, those would be: atmospheric, dark, melodic, transcendent, nocturnal, sinister, ambient, raw, cold and evil. This practice is employed as a time-saver as writers need to constantly "hype up" new bands that signed on to the "big name" record companies, who pay good advertising money for such deceivingly labelled "fan reviews". Unsurprisingly, on this site and elsewhere, the microscopic amount of "reviews" praising Summoning's music all read as is they were taken straight from the black metal "hype blueprint"... which Occam's Razor says they are.
That's perhaps the irony of Summoning and their album "Stronghold". It's just as fake as the people hyping it.
You have "real" bands that receive "fake" reviews, that is very common in journalism. Take Behemoth for example - incidentally, it's a band that was also called "Neo-Nazis" by Summoning. It's common sense to assume that pretty much all reviews on mainstream sites "praising" the "rebirth of death metal" achieved by their latest album "I Love You At Your Darkest" is fake - i.e. "written" by changing a few words from a blueprint. As I said, that's common practice, and pretty much everyone despises it but will look the other way if the music itself is halfway decent.
That does NOT mean that Behemoth aren't a "real" band, just that the reviews are "fake".
Summoning, on the other hand, are the first "fake" band to receive "fake" reviews, which really makes you wonder if the band's entire existence isn't some elaborate joke. And if it is, on whom is it pulled? The music journalists who "wrote" their reviews using the same cheap tricks that Protector and Silenius used to "record" their album? Or the idiots who actually believe that "Stronghold" is "true atmospheric black metal ambiance"? You decide.
At any rate, do replace the "Stronghold" turd with "Hvis Lyset Tar Oss" or "Dawn of Iron Blades" if you want ACTUAL black metal atmosphere, not this boring MIDI shit that your grandmother could have "recorded" - produced or "exported" are the better terms, really - in 45 minutes with FL Studio.
Stronghold score: 0/100.
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