War

By now, every black metal fan knows about this album, or at least the most "infamous" song featured, that being Crush the Lies, with its scathing lyrics proclaiming the selling out of a few other BM bands. This is/was a side project of Ukrainian black metal band Nokturnal Mortum's vocalist Knjaz Varggoth and keyboard player Saturious (also of said band). I stumbled back upon this album when I was listening to some Nokturnal Mortum songs on Youtube and this band came up. Now, forgetting Crush the Lies, when one digs deeper and listens to the whole album, you will find that this song, and all the others, offer nothing but horrendous amounts of garbage, with a stench so vile that not even rats and flies will touch it. As one could guess from the band name and song titles, this is a National Socialist "Black" Metal album (you will notice I put quotations around the word black and I'll explain later), but instead of the normal tripe associated with that BM offshoot, you are greeted to an even lower form of depravity. This may as well be considered the biggest joke in the history of heavy metal. I'm not opposed to anti-judeo lyrics so much as I am the ignorance they are written with, nor am I a supporter of politics creeping their way into black metal. I mentioned before about the quotations around the word black. Let me ask this simple question: can this album even be called black metal? I have a hard time believing so at times, because there is nothing black metal about this. Anyone can use harsh vocals, blast beats, and tremelo-heavy guitars. Do these things necessarily make a band BM? No, and this is all the proof you need.

I think the first thing you will notice is the lack of good riffs found on this album. Sure, there are a few decent ones scattered throughout the duration of this crap, but good luck sitting through all the bad to reach the good. When I say good, I don't necessarily mean really good. I mean salvagable in that they are decent, but need some work to become good. I honestly don't know what Varggoth was thinking when he wrote these songs. Obviously he was thinking about his immense hatred of the Jewish population, but when writing the music did he forget what makes his main band so damn good? It's the almighty RIFF, the very thing that attracts us, the fans, to this form of music in the first place. Anyway, let's just say that this was a huge mistake. I'm pretty sure the drums you hear are programmed, so you know you won't find anything special, in fact, they are as you would expect: bad. I can't tell if there's any bass, but would it really matter anyway?

Now comes the absolute worst part of this album: the lyrics, and oh, what lyrics are there to behold. Now, I've read some pretty bad lyrics in my day, but these take the title of worst ever. I know Varggoth (and I say him because I'm pretty sure he wrote them) is Ukrainian and English is not his mother tounge, but that doesn't mean you can't put some effort into writing in that language. It's as if he scribbled down some words, mixed them up, and then proceeded to put them in a completely random order, calling it a song. Why not write the lyrics in his own language? I'm sure they'd have proper grammar and I wouldn't have to see how horrible they are. It's not only the grammar that is appauling, but the overall scheme. The song A National Socialistic Call features the word "nigger" roughly fifteen times. Can you be anymore amateur than that? It's not that I'm offended by these things, but I loathe stupidity, and that's what this project seems to be based on.

I honestly wouldn't recommend this album to anybody. It's not catchy, it's not well written, it's certainly not any good. It is merely in exsistence, and that's nothing to be proud of. I gave this a score of 10 because of the few salvagable riffs present, and even that may be too high. I'm actually surprised Varggoth and even Nokturnal Mortum have been able to live this down. I guess people have short attention spans. Avoid this at all costs. It's not like you'll be missing anything.