Demo 39 - Experiment

Zarach 'Baal' Tharagh, the man, the myth, the legend. The French maestro of abhorrent creations and dreadful productions. The man who single handedly gave retarded French children hope, the man who gave bedroom black metal an inferior. Yes, he's real, he is Zarach 'Baal' Tharagh, and he promises a better future for all. Chances are he'll go down in history as the only project with more releases than listeners, or more certainly, the single most moronic, naive, mindless drone to ever toil the planet; what the fuck is the point of this project? I honestly do not know. The music is terrible on its own, and when comparred to the like of oh, I don't know, music, it comes this inferior, meaningless laughable noise.

However, amidst all the shit put forth by Zarach 'Baal' Tharagh, Demo 39 is probably the best of them all. There's a number of somewhat decent songs; decent when in comparisson to the likes of his other releases, ZBT has a scale of his own, you cannot compare this to the likes of real bands and what not, only to his other releases. There's a number of songs on this release that would suggest that ZBT actually has ears, but then again, there's over 100 releases which would suggest otherwise. The album is essentially comprised of three things; bassy songs, which are comprised of resonant tracks layered in thick bass tracks, we have some weak, vague 'punk' songs and then we have the ambient tracks, which are more-or-less the highlight of Demo 39.

The songs are organized in no order at all, and along with the production (even by ZBT standards) would most likley suggest this is a rehearsal, or collaboration of numerous rehearsal sessions. One standout problem is that the compositions are overly generic. The repetative guitar, playign some form of punk influenced black metal is followed carefully and distinctly by the bass, while the drum machine pounds out some variation of a rock-beat. Though timing is absolutley terrible, if at all existant, the music is predictive. As contradictory as this is, the music has no flow, no direction and no timing, yet the music is completley and utterly predictive.

However, Demo 39, beleive it or not, isn't completley bad. It actually features three decent - nay, alright tracks. Poison, Experiment and Nightmare are excellent ambient creations. If ZBT spent more than two weeks per release creating some true heartfelt ambiance, perhaps ZBT woudln't be the boat he's currently in. Anyway, to wrap up; Demo 39 is free, if you're at all intruiged by this French mastermind, please, go download it. Perhaps you'll like the ambient interludes, like me.

First off, this one-man project by Luc Mertz is self-called an "experiment" and is also listed as "Demo 39". Moreover, it's on a "split-CD" with a project from Estonia called Gruuthaagy. You simply can't get any more low-budget than that.

Having been familiar with experimental and "avant garde" music for a number of years I felt it appropriate to contribute my two cents here. Plus, common logic would have me say that there is no such project that would deserve an absolute ZERO percent rating, as that would indicate zero talent, zero musical vision, zero effort, zero everything. We can't say that kind of thing and still be objective. We can say how much we hate something. I would probably put this recording on such a list as that. I'm only listening to this because I too have heard of how bad it is.

There are distinguishable instruments being used here, and some effort must be acknowledged for that reason. I can certainly hear the use of a guitar, although with all the post-processing distortion happening, it's hard to tell if there is just a bass guitar or a bass- and six-string regular guitar. The drum sound is so muffled that there's no distinguishing it from an air-conditioner box. Still, though, the beats can be heard and matched up to the other noise that's going on.

I cannot really say whether this could be categorized as "black metal" or not, save for the one aspect of sounding purely demonic, which is more characteric of the "early Bathory"-era black metal sound. This, however, is by no means a comparison to Bathory. I would probably categorize this demo as something more like "black noise".

Not all tracks sound exactly the same, as once said. There are some variations heard, exactly the kind of thing one could expect from a project labeled "Experiment." All in all, I was thankful that the experience ended rather quickly and that this release was available for free download. Thank you, Smell The Stench Records, for giving visitors the "listen-and-delete" option. For a truly objective and diverse listening experience, try this out once. I'm giving it a 9 out of 100.