Diabły wzywają

I heard somewhere online that this is the "worst black metal release of all time". And since I was bored and wanted to torture myself, I decided to give it a listen. Oh dear lord.

The intro track sounds like if the synths Varg Vikernes used on Burzum album Dauði Baldrs were more dark and evil sounding. The poor quality of the recording gives it that authentic Dauði Baldrs feel to it. It sounds like Keldon was just hitting random notes on an organ until it vaguely sounded like "music". The guitars sound completely untuned and I don't think Keldon was even using an amplifier or anything. I'm 99% sure he was just playing his guitar into his microphone without any additional effects. I also do not hear any bass whatsoever, and the drums are so bad it is insane. In fact, the drums on this album sound like Keldon was just hitting tin cans or buckets. I'm all for people recording music on a budget, but..

The vocals also sound horrendous. Even Attila "Nails On A Chalkboard" Csihar on Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas album sounded better than Keldon's vocals. Keldon's vocals sound like they were recorded via a Skype call, or via a microphone found in an alleyway. His attempts at doing a black metal growl simply sounded like the noise your straw makes when you're finished your drink at a restaurant. Nearly every song has long, silent pauses that make it impossible to tell whether it's the same song or if it's changed to a different one. "Na drodze ku bramom" abruptly ends 2 minutes into the song, and it's complete silence until about a minute later, when the synths from the intro track start to play again. To me, it feels like Keldon was trying to imitate Burzum-styled ambient music. Needless to say, he didn't do a great job at it. If Keldon wanted to induce vertigo in his listeners, then it sure as hell worked.

Now, usually after bashing an album like that, I would try to give positive feedback about what I liked about the album. But, honest to god, I could not find a single thing redeemable about this album. Even with Dauði Baldrs, which is, in my opinion, the worst Burzum album ever, I was able to find some things about it that I enjoyed. But Diabły wzywają is like the Chernobyl of black metal. Nothing can save this album. Even the covers are horrible. The pentagram on the back looks like it was drawn with the line tool in MS Paint, and, to be honest, I think it was. The text on the front cover is off-centered as well, and that pisses me off.
I guess at least Keldon tried to make some kind of music.. and succeeded? I don't know, maybe Keldon invented a new genre entirely.
In conclusion, please please please do not listen to this album.

Is this album good? No. Does this album deserve all the hate it gets? No (or at least partially).

We'll start with the bad. Most of the hate comes from the fact that the production is terrible (which I agree with). Another big problem with this album is that the guitars sound like they weren't plugged in and generally sound like shit. The drumming- scratch that, everything, everything is off-tempo. Usually (for me at least), shittier production makes vocals (and the whole album for that matter) sound much more dirty and intense. This album takes the former and ramps it up. The vocals (in this case severely weakened by the production) could've been pretty good, but they sound like they were recorded by playing them through a phone speaker into a mic.

Now for the good (yes even this album has redeemable qualities). There were 3 tracks on this album that I "enjoyed." They are: Zmierzch, Na drodze ku bramom, and ...Lecz demony Whislandh nadal czuwają. The first 2 are both pretty well done black ambient tracks. If there was a better produced song (with actually distorted guitars) Zmierzch would make a pretty good intro. It just doesn't fit with the rest of this album. Na drodze ku bramom is another well done piece (probably because what makes this album bad isn't present on this song). I could very well see this song as something by Moevot (very good band, check them out). The last track I listed, ...Lecz demony Whislandh nadal czuwają I only partially enjoyed. Keldon finally turning on his distortion at the very end was nice.

Overall: This is The Shaggs of Black Metal.

With the opening ambient organs that sound half-sinister, half-goofy and amateurish, you may think that this is going to be a horribly performed and recorded, but still passable black metal release. When the actual music kicks in, you slowly realise that this album was a mistake. The term "album" is used here loosely, as the 5 tracks spanning 22 minutes is what most bands would barely call an EP, but if anything I should give Diabły Wzywają some points for this, as 22 minutes of torture is better than 40, 50, or God forbid 60+ minutes of torture. Why is this album so bad? It should be obvious from the opening chords of the second track and virtually any other point during the record; the guitars are out of tune and don't even sound plugged in, with a twangy and tinny sound that admittedly fits the sloppy and out-of-time performance, but not in a good way.

If it's possible, the drums are somehow more pathetic than the guitar tracks, as their tone is beyond flat and, apart from the constant bashing of the cymbal, the drum beats literally sound like someone using a cardboard box as a punching bag. The patterns are performed with no sense of consistency or impact, as there are spontaneous parts where the music cuts out entirely, and the combination of the instruments becomes an incoherent mess. As for the vocals, they are the best part of the record, which should say something about the quality. The poor delivery in the guy's voice isn't annoyingly bad, but is just mediocre and is also mixed terrible, with a raw and scratchy sound over the muffled music.

What is probably the worst aspect of this album is how godawful the songwriting is. Take Zniszcz Swego Boga for example, the worst offender of this, which opens with a terrible riff, but then cuts out to about 10 seconds of silence, before suddenly starting again with a completely different rhythm and the dynamics of a different song; no progression, no establishment of fluent ideas, not even any sense between the changes in the songs.

You can't even tell if this is intentional and just a failed attempt at experimentation, or if the guy behind this project genuinely didn't know how to press record and play until the take or the song was finished, before editing the parts together. You'd think that before taking the effort to press copies of this album, some thought would go into the production and how the album sounds in the first place, but no. Musical effectiveness, structural integrity, creativity and enjoyable production are all absent from this record. Diabły Wzywają is a joke and a complete waste of time.