The Unholy Path to Hell

I'm not one of those people who refuses to go bargain bin-diving and only buys albums he already knows he loves, because I've always thought that was boring and kind of did a disservice to the fun in picking out an album based on its packaging and aesthetics. But lately I've come to see that there is indeed a tangible benefit to being so anal and picky when it comes to buying physical music: I get the feeling that people who abide by such a philosophy end up with fewer releases like this in their collection, the kind that just... don't serve a purpose or really need to exist. This is the kind of release I've listened to maybe four times, and yet I've probably taken its cassette tape off the shelves and picked it up at least ten, just sort of critically ogling it and asking it "What the fuck is the point of you?" I doubt any tears would be shed if this thing suddenly ceased to exist, except maybe by the band members over the loss of their vanity black metal band, the kind they probably bring up around friends to let them know that THEY have a band, aren't they cool!!!

The Unholy Path to Hell is about as musically stimulating as chewing on a pencil; Burning Bethlehem are essentially a musical mutt, playing a misguided amalgam of black metal styles but not really making a lasting impression with any of them. If you can think of it, this release has probably got it. Twangy, slow, melodic arpeggios? Gotcha covered there. Mid-paced, deep and heavy plucked chords with slow, basic rocking beats underneath? You bet! Remnants of classic thrash melodies and licks stuck into the riffs? Mhm, mhm, mhm. The occasional blasty part with an undeniably Finnish sense of melody? You better believe it's here. From d-beats to old-fashioned tremolo riffs from Emperor songs and everything in between, this release was apparently stuffed with every piece of black metal that the band members could think of. All that's really missing is a 15-minute-long socially aware song with acoustic guitars and lyrics about forests.

Surprisingly, the music ends up sounding less disjointed than it probably sounds based on that description, but the fact remains that they're simply not too good at pulling off any musical elements in particular. Of the aforementioned elements, the heavily-strummed chords probably have the most impact, but even they're not stellar. The rest is just, well, textbook black metal in one way or another and I've heard it all dozens of times before while listening to releases exactly like this one. Hell, even the production (murky and raw, maybe with a bit more hiss than your average black metal band) and the vocals (a standard raspy caw) sound copied and pasted from somewhere else. Nothing about The Unholy Path to Hell is bad, but then again, considering how easy it is to make totally unremarkable black metal that sounds like everybody else's, I guess that's not really hard. At least bad bands usually try something different and don't refuse to just shrug and rehash everyone else's ideas. Shit like this shouldn't even exist.

Listening to this, I'm unable to shake the feeling that these guys are newbies to black metal who decided to form a black metal band because they thought it would earn them some cred with their metal friends. It's either that, or they're totally content with making a black metal album that has no identity and only exists to add +1 to the total number of black metal albums ever created. Either way, this is boring and you don't need to hear it.