Unconquered Soldiery

Tsathoggua this one is for you my fellow friend!

So after 11 years without any kind of activity, the infamous band Arghoslent surprised us in the infamous year of 2020 with an album....recopilatory. I'm not saying that Arghoslent is trying to rip off their fans (they just want to get money out of them without having to make an effort) but one could perhaps hope that after, again, 11 years, they could have made more of an effort to release something more than a simple compilation of songs, which were ALREADY released in various splits and Eps between 2000 and 2005, that barely make it half an hour if they didn't throw in a Carnivore cover (I guess to make the scam, I mean the laziness, less obvious).

Although maybe the songs are so good that they might be worth it! Ah no, that's not the case, I think your music has a problem when the main thing that characterizes it are your good riffs and the best riff of the whole compilation is in the Carnivore cover. In general Arghoslent's music has always seemed to me to be full of a lot of embellishments and nuances to hide how empty and bland it is, this also causes a lot of the songs to be artificially stretched out making them not only bland but also insufferable. They try to be more raw and kvlt with a very poor production, to make everything sound sharper but knowing the band you can't help but feel like they are trying to force something they are not, they try to be more brutal sounding more like a garage band with low quality but high energy, and even that doesn't save the inconsistent songwriting full of repeating patterns that never seem to fit.

Arghoslent's music usually always seems to be full of wasted potential, I would love to hate this band more than I already do but in all their releases I always find a couple of songs that seem to work in that special way that their hardcore fans say they do in each of their songs, nothing could be further from the truth that the peak they show is something that happens very punctually, but when it does it's just at that moment where they manage to write a good riff guiding with cadence an accomplished guitar solo that introduces you fully into the song, and advances in an unstoppable way accompanied by the deep growls of the vocalist, in this release more dissonant and stronger than ever (because why are they going to make an effort to rework songs from more than 15 years ago for which they want to cash in now? ) but those occasions are going to be just an honorary distinction rather than a general norm as is the case with the tracks "Jaws of the Furnace" and the Carnivore cover "Race War" on this release.

Another Arghoslent product I hear that follows the same dynamic, whatever little potential they show is thrown away, just as people should throw this work in the trash.