Death's Design

Ach. Please. PLEASE. Seriously. I think I'd rather listen to "Cold Lake". Hell, I think I'd rather listen to Nightwish, or even Tarja Turunen's solo project. It really is that goddamn bad. In fact, it is so bad, it could actually be on Code666. This guy was in the recording line-up for "Dance of December Souls"? How? And then, why did THIS happen??

This is of course another one of these abominations that I was coaxed into listening to by some friend of mine assuring me it's the greatest thing in the universe. For some reason that always works out really well for me (note the sarcasm). And you know, much to this album's advantage said friend was not so much into playing whole albums back in the day, so I only heard little snippets of it in Winamp shuffle, which by one very wise decision by Blakkheim are usually only around 15-30 seconds long. Judging by those tiny bits I actually thought that this album - while far from anything great or outstanding - was at least fine and listenable. A glaring and potentially fatal misjudgement on my part, that's for sure. A couple of seconds of this garbage can indeed be tolerable, but a whole five minutes of it already constitutes self-torture, a whole album of this borders certain suicide.

To give you a general idea of how and why this is as terrible as it is I can sum up the sound of this atrocity quite easily because there really isn't much to it in terms of depth, it's basically just music by numbers, just in a particularly annoying way due to the nature of these numbers, the influences the album - or the musician behind it, rather - draws on, and the way they are combined. Basically, there are three major parts to this album, randomly thrown in between and into each other.

The first and most prominent part is pretty much nothing but ultra-generic Cradle of Filth-worship. You know, that type of cheesy, sugar-coated and overgothed post-"Black Metal" we've all come to love so much, though even more lacking in substance than the so much revered paragon from Suffolk. There is a bit of variation to the shameless plagiarism, as sometimes the music transcends into the realms of actual Black Metal, be it only the less than appealing Swedish melodic variety. To make matters worse, just as often it just descends into completely moronic "groove" nonsense that is almost as bad as Sepultura's "Roots" album. Yes, you read correctly, I wrote "Roots", not "Chaos A.D.". It really is that fucking bad. Actually has those lame pretentious tribal drums occasionally as well, taking the "Roots"-comparison even further. Heck, it's almost Soulfly.

The second major part is that nauseating Guns'n'Roses (and company) type of early 90s post-glam many of the (in)famous 80s transvestites puked out in complete desperation over losing their much beloved super-stardom to more modern forms of music. You know, the type of lame cock rock that plays around with elements bordering grunge, Rage Against The Machine/Red Hot Chili Peppers kind of bouncy-castle-core and even proto nu-"metal" elements, but still sounds like fucking retarded lame cock rock, just even more retarded. Finally, the third part sounds pretty much like some really crappy Batman soundtrack. And I certainly don't mean the Batman Begins/The Dark Knight kind of Batman. Not even the Michael Keaton Batman. Hell, not even the somewhat cult-ish classic Adam West Batman. What I mean is the retarded, annoying, pathetic Batman Forever/Batman & Robin kind of Batman. I may be repeating myself, but I can really only say: Yes, it really is that goddamn fucking bad. You want to know how really bad it is? Just skip forward to the thirtieth track, when Blakkheim covers a tune from the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack, which then turns into something that sounds like a rap beat, then returns into a Guns'n'Roses style cock rock version of the Conan tune. Need I say more? Dare I say more?

Everyone's favourite fun fact is of course that Blakkheim advertised this abomination as a soundtrack for a supposed horror movie, which of course never existed. And we're damn lucky for that. It certainly would have been a horror for me. But even putting the horrendously bad quality of the music aside, how appropriate do you really think basically a mixture of lame modernized cock rock and cheesy neo-Batman moments would be for a horror movie? The only genre I can even remotely find this fitting in is that of late 80s/early 90s comedy movies about American high school life. You know, some sort of mixture between Revenge of the Nerds and American Pie, just a billion times worse. Besides the aforementioned quality, there is no horror to be found here, just pathetic upbeat fun music, so disgustingly happy sounding that it makes Finntroll seem like Disembowelment in comparison. What the fuck is this crap, really? Why was it ever recorded? Who buys this shit, and who actually listens to it? It's almost insulting that anyone would release this. I'd rather see Rainfall be on first place in the charts than see any copy of this record sold. Well, you can guess what I'm about to say... It really is that bad.

In conclusion... well, I don't know what more really needs to be said. This is quite possibly the worst album ever recorded. Thinking about what to say about this album almost comes out as a collection of the worst possible Angry Nintendo Nerd quotes. There just barely is any way to talk about this pile of buffalo dung and not break out into random cursing. It isn't just simply worthless like many other albums I don't care the least bit for, it truly is offensive in how much it sucks. Please, if you have a shred of sanity within you, avoid this at all cost, unless you are into extreme masochism and seriously want to badly punish yourself. It really is... well, you know.