Oculus Infernum

This is boring, annoying, too similar, and most importantly...not black metal.

I fucking love black metal. I really do. But when a band that seems like they could do BM instead decides to insult it with an incredibly loud, overproduced, and just plain insipid-sounding record, you wonder why Varg hasn't broken out of prison and ate their fucking brains.

This band tries WAAYYY too hard to be black metal, and they end up transcending it and becoming silly (see Dark Funeral, or any of the countless other blastblastblast "Norsecore" crap bands). The vocals? There is no emotion, no hatred, no sadness, no depression, no insanity, just pointless screaming of "blasphemy". The riffs are overused and repetitive, and that's normally fine. But the problem here is that they are just not fun to listen to OR trance-inducing like most good BM tends to be. The drumming is horrific. Yeah the guy is pretty fast. Yeah he throws in some good fills that would make some of the songs otherwise pretty boring. But, he is just so annoying. The double bass is clicky and it's ALWAYS THERE. There's no escaping it. Bass? Yeah it's there and I can hear it, but you're not really supposed to in black metal. As I said before, this band isn't black metal. They're an abomination to the name.

Yeah there are a few good points to this to make me give it a relatively good score. If you think of this as basically just metalcore (yes, they have breakdowns...whatever) with an incredibly small mainstream black metal influence, it doesn't tend to get on your nerves that much. Giving this band a 90 and then turning around and giving Beherit or something an 85 and saying that you're a black metal fan is false. It's just plain incorrect.

Avoid this and other equally bad bands (Marduk, the aforementioned Dark Funeral), etc. and their equally bad albums. Go get some actual black metal instead, for fuck's sake. It's better than this.

These guys could be Marduk in disguise. They play just as fast and brutally as Marduk do, and they also throw in complex riffs and melodic guitar lines and mid paced drumming. Triumph of Fire was good, but this beats it in all aspects. This band has really matured since that album. They have certainly grown a lot as musicians and have very good song writing skills. Of course they appear just as the Black metallers of old with corpsepaint and spikes. This really brings back memories of the golden age of BM before BM became more mainstream and symphonic. And believe it or not, these guys are from fuckin America!! If you thought the American BM scene was almost non-existent, then you will be in for a rude awakening when you hear this. Along with Thornspawn these guys are revitalizing the USBM scene in terms of speed and aggression. There are really no standout tracks here, everyone is good in its own right, but like some other BM bands, it does get a little monotonous after a while, but that's alright, this is just too damn good to pass up. Bands like this make me proud to be an American.