Lesbian Corpse Wolves

While this isn't nearly as trite as Selenoclast Wolves, Dead Raven Choir are still proving that the quality of their black metal material is the complete inverse of their acoustic improvised folk ramblings. I don't know anybody who particularly like their acoustic music and I have no idea why they recorded so much of it. For the most part (I'll elaborate on this in a second), this is the same as all of Smolken's acoustic work. It's basically one sole acoustic guitar (maybe two, I'm not sure, but nothing that couldn't be played on one) improvising and returning to a recurring theme every now and then, with some poems read out over the top. It's as sterile and boring as it sounds.

Saying that, this is much better than Selenoclast Wolves. There's a lot more variation here. Clean female vocals, bits of what sounds like piano, a fiercer, more intense vocal style (almost black metal in it's delivery) and when we do get a recurring theme, they're not quite as boring as the Selenoclast Wolves ones. However, this still has all of the same pitfalls of that album, especially that annoying, random guitar rambling that plucks out completely pointless, out of key notes and does little for the atmosphere at all. The songs still have no structure at all (not that they were intended to) and the only real melody comes from the clean female vocals, which aren't really used enough. There's now a piano, playing random improv also, so I guess that's a step back.

It's hard to really criticize this, because everything I'm complaining about is obviously what the music is intended to be. I can't really complain that the music isn't memorable when Smolken didn't try to write memorable music. But a valid point that I can make is that this completely and utterly bores me, and at points can get irritating, and I can't imagine a mood where I'd ever want to listen to this at all.