Evil Command

If you spit or piss into the wind, chew with your mouth agape, laugh at a comment your boss said that wasn't a joke, then you'd be one of the many who do things without thinking clearly. You're in the moment, who cares what comes next? I can imagine Lord Paymon having some fixation with whatever they were doing back in 2003 and reasoning that it was "it," and with their ambitious creation, either had too many trees in their forest to see what the big picture would look like or didn't have one of those blunt and straightforward buddies to tell them any differently. 'Sorry, bros, that's a no go.' To put my words as plain as Jane, I would rather listen to more grossly popular black metal than have to sit through this album again. While it's not the usual suspect of production that dominates the hurt for 'Evil Command,' it is their song writing and the projection that Lord Paymon does it in.

Black metal vocals from my listening experience have been many different things, but what simply gets me listening more intently is when they are captivating. While the ones I like have been generally harsh and grotesque, I've still been able to maintain ear-transfixion and a yearning to hear more of them with whatever emotion they are trying to convey. So, why Lord Paymon's vocalist drives me up the wall and essentially plummets the band into anything worse than they could have done just playing vocally-dry, is that he is simply out of his league, trying too hard, and the most hurtful of all: attempting to conform to something he missed by more than several lagging shadowing steps. On the first four tracks he's at his worst, on the remaining tracks that have vocals he's just as inconsistent though less irritating due to the shift in lower recording quality. For the majority he goes for a losing-air scream, which makes his vocals come out higher pitched. He sounds somewhat dry, scratchy, and a pain in the throat to listen to. Picture walking through a surreal atmosphere where single-cell, padded mental institutions have ducks in straight jackets and screaming/quacking out all of their fluctuating pleas for help. And likewise not knowing that they are shooting themselves in the foot for getting any aid from anyone who just wants to clear the room, put the biggest set of ear plugs ever created in, or put them out of their misery quickly and quietly for violating your soundscape.

The music brings about a side that is dirty and a little rough. The production gives it a layer of slime from effects that make it somewhat hazy, and the music can sound slightly different per track with one instrument's volume raised on one track and a little pushed back on the next. The band switches between quickly played tremolo riffs with barbaric or melodic projection, to simplistic palm muted sections that want your head to bang, but the reasoning voice in your brain is proclaiming a cease and desist order causing you to remain immobile as they fly this or that by your ears. The vocals squeeze and drain away valid reasons to want to pay attention to the underlying music than grab an aspirin, block most of it out and try to keep on going. While they do actually have a few sections littered about that create a likening ringing in your ear, and the later tracks seem harsher and faster, though not anywhere close to saving the day. Even with some hooks on their faster oriented parts or harsher leaning riffs that are thicker sounding than the typical thin-as-a-string-bean guitar lines littered about in the genre of black metal. The band could quite possibly be inspired by earlier Mayhem when they were mixing brands of music and didn't have a clear and divided line like there is/has been for the last bunch of years. Mayhem's charisma they have not, however.

I want to come right out with it and say this album has been a waste of time, and in real, live conversation it might be my one and only sentence to describe this recording. Even if making the 'moral' choice—I'm deeming it no longer immoral to do so here—to pirate Lord Paymon's recording, it would be like finding free money on the ground and with glee putting your "find" in your pocket. But later, when trying to spend it, you notice that you had a hole in your pocket, making the experience come full circle and bite you in the ass no matter how you look at it. Time's been wasted and as a reviewer I want to give you some of that time back, de nada, pas de quoi, and you're welcome. This is so as to tell potential listeners, this album cheats and it steals in wholly different ways and should be sent away for a long time, so no one will happen upon its utter (I could easily fill the blank here with many different words)...ineffectualness, which sounds about right to the point. Yeah, they were dirty/harsh/against mainstream ideals, though it doesn't matter in their case, and I'm not going to go out on the limb to say—I'll just comfortably sit back and speak this with confidence—they would have been on a better though still bumpy road to stop that guy from vocalizing to begin with.