Church Arsonist

Alright, let me start off by saying I love lo-fi black metal as much as anyone else on the planet... well, maybe not as much as these guys, because they are so endeared with lo-fi music, that they intentionally made this album sound awful.

The album starts with some samples. The samples are of some footsteps, and then burning, and then church choir sounds (heh... church arson... GET IT?!). Then the fucking music kicks in. And it's half the volume of the samples. Do you hear me, kids? The MUSIC is HALF the volume of the fucking SAMPLES! That means that you listen to the samples, stupid as they may be, and then you have to double the volume to get the music at the same level.

Am I getting through to you? It's fucking incredible what people can do with music these days and still sell a fucking record...

It's not just that either. The samples sound very, very clear, whereas the music sounds like it was mushed together in a blender. A black-metal blender of embarrasment.

But the music itself? Well, it's mediocre at best. The drums are mixed horribly, where all you can discern amongst the percussion is the loud ringing sound of the ride and crash, and some basic beats. The guitars are a low drone, apparently with no change in notes or strum pattern. The bass is virtually non-existant. The only thing musically you can really hear is this keyboard they like to throw over the mix every so often. When you do hear it, you are tempted to believe that it's a fade-out technique. You know, when they throw some droning holy noise over the rest, start heightening the volume on that while they lower the rest of the music slowly... well, there's no fade out, it's just annoying.

The vocals are extreme. I wish this vocalist would join a band that knew how to mix their music better. In fact, I wish this band would just learn to mix their music better. Fuck it, it's not like they are an awful black metal band, they are just awful producers. I would listen to this album more often if I had an automatic volume-adjustment and equalizer system. Because if one were to simply tweak the mix, and level out the volume, it would probably be a pretty good black metal offering. Unfortunately, we'll never knpw how good, because everything has been buried in the wrong place.

Oh, and here's a truly mind-blowing bit... rarely does this happen, but when it does, it's noticeable... The singer will break into his awfull Atilla impression. You know De Mysteriis... when he tries to throw in some operatics? It's like that, but twice as awful, twice as weak. And at the end of the secnd track, to couple with that, they even outro with some classical guitar. Not necessarily a bad thing, unless you use this example. Minimalism, thy name is Church Arson.

Comparing the sound to something else, I'd have to say it's alot like Deathcrush meets Obsidian Torment (Uvall). Unfortunately, it's the bad things from this bastard child that really shine through.

If you find it, and you're an optimist, feel free to pick it up. You can listen to it as I do, imagining a better-mixed version. Or you can listen to it for a laugh with your elitist black-metal pals. All in all, I'd say that this is a good album, that was tossed into a blender/mixing-board with some bad ideas and some loud samples, and whatever mush came pouring out into the press was sent off to the homes of die-hard explorers of the gere.