I must confess that I'm still a newbie to the tr00 and kvlt black metal bands out there. Those early bands that were still considered by some to be death or thrash. Of course, Satyricon is not unkown to me, either is Mayhem, but bands like Darkthrone... Not heard yet... until now. F.O.A.D., a "subtile" way to hide the actually title (Fuck off and Die) is Darkthrone's newest album. There are no traces of black metal in it. Not to say it's bad, I have an open mind for bands to experiment. It's just... This experiment is not a great succes, and I'm being soft right now.
To critizice this album on the same niveau is not only a hard task, but also one of the weakest excuses to sound as blunt as possible. It's almost as if Darkthrone wanted to dispell every sense of emotion on this album. And while some may argue that emotion is not important matter in heavy metal, this just reached the bottom. F.O.A.D. is a rusty piece of fucking metal. A blunt way to entertain headbangers. An unenjoyable piece of work for the ones whose opinions are that emotion is an important factor in music. For those, it would likely to happen that they will find it shittier than dog poop.
But how can a band be as emotionless as this is? Quite easy, actually. Have the cliché heavy metal riffs present, a screaming vocalist and some shitty drums under it. It would all work if the production was clear, like it's the case with Satyricon's Now, Diabolical (which can be enjoyable at times), but here, it's not. To make it sound even more rough, Darkthrone contained the production of their earlier years, a production that doesn't fit with Darkthrone's new goal.
Now this is a blunt piece of shit. There is no reason to minimize the drums to sloppy groove metal beats. Like the guitars, the drums are extremely simple, very uninspired, and above all, highly uninteresting. Not only has the drummer made many faults with his compositions, the drum sound is bad, tempo's and volume's are uneven and it all doesn't flow with the guitars and vocals. Not that it would matter anyway, the vocals are so dreadful, this album would score higher if it was entirely instrumental. Catch a drunk metalhead who happens to like St. Anger, and ask for an imitation of his almighty lord Hetfield. Most likely, it will sound like this vocalist. There are no grunts, no proper screams, no clean vocals. Only half-assed yells, paining my ears and wondering how one could find this comfortable to listen to. It's almost as if the vocalist tried to sound as fucked up as possible, just to sound heavy.
There are some enjoyable parts throughout, thouh very rare. Canadian Metal has a funny chorus, the solo of The Church of Real Metal is quite good and The Banners of Old features a nice bridge. But for gods sake, the chorus of F.O.A.D. was so bad, whether it be meant to be funny or serious. And on this way I can name ziljions of examples of why I question this band's sanity and musicianship. But I will finish this review with a conclusion on the same niveau of this album.
This album fucking sucks.