Satan's Whore

It's definitely hard to grasp what was going through the artist's mind as this album was made. It starts off with some cheesy ambience that sounds like it came from some poorly made thriller film. Eventually the guitar makes an appearance, that's when you wish it didn't. The riffs feel like they were ripped off of some generic nu-metal artist. This is then followed by some extremely artless yelling. It's pretty clear he's trying to sound emotionally close to breaking. But somewhere between the unforgettably bad lyrics, bad mixing and the repetitive nature of the vocals a vitally important aspect to all music in general was lost. And that is quite simply, quality.

With the emergence of the second songs, things hadn't improved. The verse riff showed some promise, unfortunately this was the worst possible thing. It was catchy. The sort of catchy that will one day force the atrocity of this song back into your head. It reminded me of Lady Gaga. Badly composed and designed to worm it's way into your head and torture you for hours. Half way through the song turned into some kind of weird jazz improvisation. Which I'm sure was a miserable attempt at being creative which wasn't pulled off, as it was neither good jazz, good improvisation, or a section of the song that fit with the rest of ear ache.

Cry for Love started off with some sort of audio insert that was supposed to be a baby crying but sounded closer to a five year old having a fit when not given a chocolate bar. I honestly couldn't detect much that separated this song from the first. When the solo kicked in I tried to consider what happened there. Was he drunk? He couldn't be, as he kept time. Was he simply a bad guitarist? I hovered on that conclusion until I realised that due to his speed he must have been playing for a while. Was he bored? Probably. Or, maybe he was just tone-deaf because that would explain quite a bit actually. It was just a smattering of fast notes, with no care for where they landed once again proving speed does not make a good guitarist. When the song ends there's a tangible feeling of relief.

But is that it? Oh, no. No, no, no. There are still thirteen more songs to go after that one. Any sane person would stop listening at this point in order to avoid further auditory suffering. But as I was planning to review the album I stuck it through to the end.

As the next song continued with no discernible improvement, I found myself wondering, "Why?! Why did someone think re-issuing this album was a good idea?" The fifth song on the release, "Valley of Meggido," caught me by complete and utter surprise. After the one and a half minute mark some tasteful sweep picking commenced. And by the three minute mark I found myself thinking, "This is a good song! Not great, but nothing like the rest of the drivel displayed so far." It was not meant to be though. Just after half way through, the song lost all direction and almost as if retaliation for allowing any vestibule of enjoyment being gleaned from the song, it turned into the most tasteless conglomeration of noise heard yet. So you can understand what I mean, I will detail what happened. Instead of working together like before to create two riffs that complimented each other, one guitar just started palm muting the one chord every now and then without any kind of rhythm or pattern, sporadically distracting you from yet another guitar solo that was improvised without any regard for what notes he was hitting or even, ultimately, what it sounded like.

Eventually we came to the song "Mountains of Dead Babies." Nothing could have prepared me for a song this bad. While it sounds like a macabre punch line to a jest, the reality of it is that this is a joke of the worst taste possible. Like most of the songs by this point it starts off with a horrible audio insert. This one is of some children singing a popular children’s christian song before it is abruptly cut off and a child says something half intelligible before some stress inducing shrieking. After this you are left to endure three minutes of dance beats, a low thick voice continually voicing the track title as the main vocals sound like a drunk mad man yelling obscenities in the street. There weren't even any guitars in this song. You would think that a blessing. But all it did was highlight the drums and woeful vocals.

By the time I reached the title track "Satan's Whore" I had come to be thankful for the trashy audio inserts as it was more or less the only reprieve from his irritating and stressful yelling and bellowing.

Song twelve, "Broken," was another surprise. Instead of throwing the listener more under-produced rubbish, we are thrown some under-produced mediocrity. A light melody is played on the guitar while the vocalist whispers about how miserable he is. The song would have been just slightly more than average had it been kept an instrumental.

After that song there's three more stress inducing talentless songs before the last track which is an outré of some drunken guy talking about something.

If you must know about all the songs not properly detailed then they can be summed up with this. They are all generic riffs that could be written by the most basic beginner of guitar. The solos are clearly improvised without any thought or planning into making it sound good. The vocals are a continual assault of yelling that does not let up or stop leaving you both sick in the stomach with a constant headache match. The drums are often simple beats that don't grab your attention to any degree, and often sound electical as though they were made with a computer program. There is no differation. Not one single bit.

My opinion is that this is the worst album I've ever listened to. I've never heard such a collection of bland riffs and headache spawning vocals all thrust onto one album. The only people this release could possibly appeal would be to people who think Disturbed playing too drunk to know what they're doing is a great idea, The fact of the matter is that this is an album released by two "musicians" who were so chuffed by the fact that they had something to release, they never thought about whether or not they should release it. After listening to the entire album I actually felt physically ill. I was further mortified to learn that the mastermind behind the composition of the music and drums was actually a guitarist for DIO from 1993 to 1999.

What I really don't get though is how this ever made it onto a label in the first place. Morphine Records and Sullen Records (for the 2010 Re-issue) must have been banking on selling this release through controversial value alone. Which didn't work anyway, as it became banned from almost all christian outlets for that very reason alone. This album is an abomination and should not exist for the public to purchase. This isn't even the sort of release that you get your hands on just to have chuckles showing it to your friends and watch them suffer through it. There will be no laughing through the purchase (or even download) of this album. Only regret. And more of that than you could possibly handle.