Infernal Battles

Back in 2000, when this album was first recorded, not many people knew much, if anything about Deathspell Omega. They had already released one demo but apart from that, they were pretty much unheard of. There were people who actually took a gamble with this and picked this CD up, probably drawn in by their cool name and equally cool logo. However, in the words of Bart Simpson this album is "powerfully uncool."

When I first listened to this, it sounded a lot like everything was just all mashed together in terms of sound. This CD is in my top five for: "worst production". It really sounds like these guys decided to record this album on a 20 year old tape recorder (and a shitty tape recorder at that). To make matters worse, it sounds like the vocalist is in a different room to the rest of the band and he's screaming the lyrics through a walkie talkie down a microphone. Yep, it really does sound like that.

Apart from the bad production when I first the album it sounded a lot like this: ultra distorted guitars, distorted drums going WHAM WHAM WHAM BANG CRASH BANG and the walkie talkie vocals going ARRR ARRRRR ARRRRRR ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!! It wasn't really until my 5th listen that I was able to get through all the sound and distortion and actually listen to and appreciate the music.

It really wasn't that bad. I could actually begin to make out some words, riffs and see that the drums actually had some talent to them, rather than the guy just slamming down on them. It wasn't all that bad really, almost good. The riffs were cool and are catchy and they change around a lot. I could almost headbang to them, but it’s hard to headbang to when you've got such utterly fucked production. However to appreciate anything in this album means you'll have to listen to this album about 5 times. This means you to endure over 2 hours of what I described in the paragraph above. So in the end, is it really worth it? The answer is no.

I suggest anyone who likes black metal to get SMRC. It's a lot longer (so it’s worth more for your dollar) the album kicks ass and the production is worlds apart from this. These guys have talent and ideas but it really isn't worth it on this one.