Bitcoin

The tale of Semargl is a pretty interesting one. Coming from Ukraine, the band was originally a black metal band. They released three albums consisting of pure black metal, that were, in my opinion, pretty solid. The band's fourth album was a change of pace; the music was less aggressive and leaned more on elements of rock and electronic music. After that change, the band decided to go full into dance pop, eurodance, and nu-metal territory - the band has never been the same.

Their fifth full length album was "Satanic Pop Metal". If people were complaining about how "poppy" their previous album was, this release made everything worse. The band completely left their aggressive roots and started to play genuinely "friendly" music. They tried to add some goth aesthetics, but the change was extremely unexpected and radical. I'm not saying that suddenly changing your music genre or mixing other genres in your band is bad, in fact, Swans has changed genres a lot of times during the band's career and they are one of the best musical acts of all time. Panopticon literally mixes black metal with bluegrass. There is nothing wrong with musical changes or experimentation, however, the problem is how radical, unexpected and badly executed it was in this case.

I needed to mention this because they have released a couple of singles this year. This one is called "Bitcoin" and it's absolutely nothing. I say this because this song doesn't make you feel anything. No happiness, no sadness, not even anger. It's just... there. No feelings at all. The music is just generic electronic music which you have probably heard a million times already; the type of music you would hear at the gym or as a leftover of the soundtrack of "Hotline Miami". In fact, it's similar to music you would on the trailer for "CyberPunk 2077". Music we have heard many times before and which brings nothing new to the table. This band has failed to bring about something new, instead, they are just regurgitating the same electronic pop music of other artists.