Under Dying Willow Sit Skeleton with Schyte

I decided to check this obscure artist (read: gimp) who I’ve been told might be just as bad as Zarach ‘Baal’ Tharagh. Well, judging from the only album I could get my hands on online, it’s certainly more ghetto than crappy. The man releases so many albums on such a tight budget that I’m guessing they all sound like this one: early demos without fuzzy production. In fact, it has this rehearsal quality where there isn’t much separation between you and the artist; you feel like you’re watching him perform on Youtube or something (playing all the instruments at once, which is what I bet he did anyway). With it, the atmosphere is empty and null, sapping any sort of magical entrancement you might be hoping to hear.

Many of the keyboard outros / interludes / intros are extremely cheesy and second-rate, though you can’t help but feel that there’s something to them you could like if they were executed properly. What was supposed to sound like an ode to Immortal comes off as a mediocre and childish. You know the man has potential, and if he upped his songwriting abilities, playing skill, and had a bit more resources to handle, then this would be something to really look into. As it subsists in this form, it isn’t even passed off as decipherable. Behemoth’s more laden demos outlive this one by a mile, while any value you’d find here is worth less than what you’d (never) fork over to a homeless person. I’ll give the guy props for being so passionate, but his music is too sloppy, dull, and poorly performed that it doesn’t matter how much optimism you bring to the table.

While I’d call the music raw black metal, there are hint of tendencies to go epic as best as he can. The guitar tone is distinct in that it’s the same kind thousands of black metal boys are used to hearing: grainy, fuzzy, slightly punk if you want to go that far, and most of all utterly powerless. There’s nothing evil about them, nor could you feel any warmth or cold breeze coming on. The leads are instantly annoying when they come on the scene, protruding with their high-pitched piercing crunch like anyone cares at this point; weakness is one thing, but these sound so tiny and frail. Some aren’t that bad, as they sound very spacey and trippy, but then you realize it’s just a fault on the amp and it quickly dies.

The riffs themselves aren’t anything special, but your attention will stick to the vocals, which happen to be butchered beyond any help. The vocals are a bit buried with growls, lazy-exhale speaking, and horrific clean vocals doing laps around each other to make this one an even worse experience. The throaty-growls I don’t really mind too much, since it fits the most with the music and have a menacing bite to them, but everything else is useless. The speaking / half-assed yelling sounds like he’s just throwing more lines in for the sake of hearing his own voice, and the clean singing is just stupid. With them, he’s trying to sound baroque, but is instead off-key and the style doesn’t approach the music as well as it should.

Between all of the songs are the drums, but they’re so stale and buried it shouldn’t even concern you. The drum bass is clicky, the cymbals are dives in frequency competing with the riffs, and the toms / snares are so dull it makes me want to drop-kick Kalrog Naar while he’s attempting blast beats. When the music is fast, the drums are quite loud; on the opposite hand, slow music means quiet drums. Also, where is the bass guitar? I sometimes hear booms in the music, but they’re very light and hardly have an impact on what’s going on. I can’t hear it as often as I should – even in ZBT once in a while I heard it and pointed at the speakers with a bug-eyed, stern look on my face.

I have one request on all you black metalheads out there: skip this. Don’t seek it out, don’t obtain it, don’t touch it, but most of all don’t hear it. Don’t do anything that would bring you closer to listening to this mess. It’s a step up on quality from ZBT, but it’s still an amateurish, bedroom attempt at making sucky black metal. Some moments aren’t too bad, but the overall album is a sore to sit through. Kalrog Naar obviously needs to step his game up, because he surely has the potential to make something worth a damn… just not with this band.