Satanic Pop Metal

I randomly discovered this album on the metal archives, but I instantly knew I had to talk about it. Since the album just turned 10 years old, let's celebrate its anniversary with a new review.

From the title, it's obvious that this album is an attempt at combining the black metal of Semargl's early work, with industrial music and dance-pop. As for its overall sound, it's a pretty catchy slice of industrial metal with danceable rhythms, nice keyboard and electronic work, raspy harsh vocals and sweet female clean vocals. Sometimes the formula work pretty well and sometimes not so much.

The first track, "I Hunger", has a nice contrast between Rutarp's raspy growls and Irina's clear and sweet singing, and it manages to have an urgent, hungry feel. Irina's voice is nice, if not exceptional, and really shines on the chorus of "Drag me to Hell". The first three tracks show some interesting synth work, with pretty good industrial intros. They're really a perfect bland of industrial music and metal.

The beginning of the album is pretty good, but it starts to fall apart right at the fifth track, the infamous hit single "Tak, Kurwa". That's not to say that there's nothing good afterwards. For example, "Join in Fire" is a pretty cool sex, satan and rock'n roll anthem, doesn't have ridiculous lyrics and lets both the electric guitars and electronic sounds shine. "Opium" has some anger and energy, and tries to do more than just basic pop metal. Other songs aren't so lucky. "Tak" isn't terrible exactly, just not as catchy as previous songs, and Rada, the other guest vocalist on the album, is a little underused, to a point where I'm not sure I could tell what her voice sounds like in comparison to Irina's.

But the really bad moments begin when the band tries to sound angry and shocking. The worst example would have to be "Suck my Dick", a pretty ridiculous poppified black metal number where a vocalist with a goofy growl tries to tell haters to, well... "I Hate You" isn't much better with its threat of "I'll fuck you by my 666". "Anti I Am" tries to be a blasphemous, I'm the Antichrist anthem, but lacks the punch, or the interesting musical accompaniment of similar anthems done by better black metal bands.

When that album is good, it's a pretty catchy blend of genres, not necessarily super-creative but enjoyable. When it's bad, it has all the worst aspects of both pop and satanic metal, and sounds like a bad caricature of the two genres its combining. Its shock value and blasphemy feel like nothing more than goofy and shallow provocation. And like bad pop music, it's catchy but goes in one ear, out the other. You'll only remember it for its stupider moments.

I went to this album expecting something that would be at least memorable for its ridiculousness, expecting both to hate it and to find it hilarious for the wrong reasons. Actually, I enjoyed some parts but didn't have a particularly great time. I didn't get anything painfully awful and stupid, just some pretty bland industrial metal.

I get that, when this album came out, mixing pop with black metal was basically a purist's worst nightmare, which is why this album became so controversial. But was the controversy deserved? But now, ten years later, I'm used to hearing industrial metal with harsh vocals, and, well, I think that stuff already existed in 2012. By now, other acts have done the industrial metal with harsh vocals thing better, and others have made better combinations of metal with pop and other distant genres.

Morbid curiosity alone got me to listen to this album. A combination of the cover, title, and the downward slope of critical opinions past Semargl's third album got me to check this one. I expected challenging music, at the very least. What I heard was something arguably worse than Celtic Frost's infamous "Prototype" EP.

I can normally play nice in my reviews about genre blending and give credit to the artists for reaching outside of the box, but this was released in 2012. By that time, metal bands should have known to stay far the fuck away from dance-pop. The aforementioned Celtic Frost failed, Bulldozer screwed the pooch too, then crunkcore nailed the coffin shut, and then Babymetal danced on the grave of this failed musical fusion experiment. Why any band would dare blend extreme metal with pop music of any sort by the time the 2010's rolled around is beyond me, but here we are with Semargl's "Satanic Pop Metal", a truly unholy listening experience that truly IS as bad as it looks, if not worse.

When your ears aren't getting assulted by the awfully-mixed house music percussions and faux-industrial synthwork, they'll instead by assaulted by painfully generic riffing, out-of-place vocal performances, and some of the worst songwriting choices ever taken by what was once a black metal band, with awful lyrics, a hodge-podge of rock'n'roll-thrash-pop- and even nu-metal riffing from song to song, and painfully flat and sterile mixing to top it all off.

If you're expecting any of Semargl's old black metal sound, prepare to be sorely disappointed because the only aspect consistent with that sound are the harsh vocals, and even they sound far different here. Granted they're intelligible, but they sound absolutely horrid and not in the good sort of way, they actually sound terrible. The female backup singer/guest singer isn't much help either, with a delivery reminiscent of 90's Eurodance, and very little personality or passion behind her voice, although compared to the harsh vocals she is a godsend.

The drum work relies way too much on the standard "kick on one, snare on three, hihat on two and four" electonic formula and includes no blast beats or any other technique relating to metal. The guitars are playing what I guess could be described as "butt-thrash" riffs, which are about as mundane and boring as one could expect... assuming they even ARE guitars. They sound so processed and drowned-out by the rest of the production that they could very well be synthesized. All these ingredients to this album's sound are thrown together with no subtlety at all, and the songwriting is so shallow and one-dimensional that even if this was some sort of musical joke, it's so unbearably unfunny that it could get more laughs if Pauly Shore performed it.

This album isn't even entertainingly bad, it is actually torturous. Every aspect of it is terrible. There is no bright spot except for the silence in between the songs. All hope is lost beyond the first song. If this is the aim of "Satanic pop metal" the genre that the band claims here to make, then they've succeeded. There truly is "no fun, no core, no mosh, no trends" to be found in this album. It's not fun to listen to, it's hollow as fuck, nobody's moshing let alone bobbing their head, and thankfully very few bands (if any others) have actually pursued this direction to the same degree of awful as Semargl have.

From what I hear of their new stuff they've dropped the metal sound entirely and have gone for instrumental electronic songs. I'm not going to say "I Love Cyberpunk" or "Bitcoin" are better songs than what's shown here... but I'm definitely thinking it.

Satanic Pop Metal is an album name, not a genre, but if it was, it would describe the Semargl’s fifth album perfectly. It is a combination that should not work, containing upbeat synths and clean female singing layered over black metal riffing and vocals. A decent comparison would be to the J-pop/metal fusion group Babymetal. Strangely, the opposing styles don’t clash, instead working in harmony to make songs that don’t sound particularly good, but sound like… well, songs, rather than chaotically dissonant elements that don’t flow together. Satanic Pop Metal works musically.

I’m all for the combination of genres. When I found out that there was a death metal band with jazz influences out there (I’m talking about Atheist, of course), I got excited and had to listen right away. But two genres that completely contradict each other, both musically and in culture? Some things just don’t belong together. Hardcore and death metal contrast each other far less than pop and black metal, but I think we can all agree that deathcore was a terrible idea. Semargl chooses a really strange fusion of genres (fortunately one that never gained the popularity that deathcore did).

Above all else, Satanic Pop Metal is a novelty. And the novelty doesn’t even last long. The album is a 44 minute ordeal, and the entertaining first couple of songs give way to more of the same breed. It gets old fast. It reminds me a lot of the one dubstep album Korn did, another release with a unique, interesting sound, but in the end, a novelty. Maybe, if both of these styles had been done by a more talented band, they would’ve had more staying power. Satanic Pop Metal, besides its bizarre juxtaposition of vastly different genres, is completely unmemorable. Nothing is even catchy. The songcraft is mediocre and there are no standout tracks. The lyrics are poor, superficial (like pop), but with more of an angry edge to them.

Still, I recommend this album to everyone. Listen to a minute or two, or a song, just to get an idea. Satanic Pop Metal does have its value, though it mainly lies in its novelty shock-factor. I have to give them credit for trying something new, but in short, it was a bad idea to mix two genres that are better off separate, while employing totally unexceptional songwriting skills.

The biggest problem many bands of the extreme metal persuasion face when first starting out, or trying to break into any kind of scene, is having their particular musical brand labeled as a "joke". None of us want that, really, and (hopefully) the most minutely talented and/or comedic acts expect a certain level of seriousness to be felt in their music (even Psychostick isn't goofy ALL the time...). It doesn't help, especially in the black metal world, to spend a lot of time plying your wares, cultivating your personal approach to the sound, make everything as hunky-dory as possible and be ridiculed and lumped in with the shitheads that give that sound a bad name. You are judged by the company that you keep in the end, be it friend, foe, or genre. Sad, but true.

And bands like this doesn't help any in the least...

This album hurts. Dear GODS, does it hurt. And it offends. Like a foul stench so bad it gives you a migraine. I'm not quite sure where to begin on how much of a negative impact this album has left on me; each bad aspect has an equally high level of acidity. But I suppose I could start with the musical end of it... Now, it's my understanding that Semargl haven't/don't really classify/ied themselves as a true black metal act in any stretch outside of the occasional Satanic ranting, so I won't go into any attempt to pigeon-hole. But the music presented AS IS on "Satanic Pop Metal" is such a hacky mess of styles that sounds very confused on what it really wants to be. The pop-style breakdowns, the monstrously overwrought synths, the overprocessed-to-"perfection" riffs merely following the techno beats along...all of it just sounds so out of context with one another that would-be listeners would just end up more perplexed than entertained. No real grand ideas are present within the compositional end, either; I didn't detect any moments that struck me with anything other than derision and a sense of being very bothered by it all. But I don't expect major hooks to be present in my extreme metal; at least give me enough to go on, to get a good idea on what you're shooting for, and the end result of "Satanic Pop Metal" is just so flat, hollow and vapid, so lacking of good, solid ideas. Like regular pop music. Go figure.

And then, of course, comes the actual face of the group. The prerequisites of a black metal act are present (corpse pain, spikes, pentagrams, you know the drill), but you know you're in trouble when a group has to shove fistfuls of cock-teasing and faux-lesbianic tendencies at you in such heavy doses in order to make sure you take notice. It's everywhere with these guys: in their album art, their videos, their lyrical themes; tits, tongues, and thongs, just everywhere. It's such a shallow way to go; so empty is the music presented that naked, sexy vamps have to claw at each other, snarl "evilly" and pick at themselves in order for your eyes and ears to maintain focus. The whole act just smacks of fakeness, like a sneering mask of contempt, and the fact that the rest of the members play such roles to the hilt is something that I don't know if I should applaud of shake my fist in rage at. Maybe it really is all a joke? This is just performance art rather than a real band? For their sake, I really hope that's true, 'cause this is one of those bands and albums that REALLY gives extreme metal a black eye, where the whole "Too Extreme!" appeal that is worth little more than titillation to rebellious high school kids runs the risk of taking much of the seriouness and dark mystery out of black metal (...if any still exists in this post-Fantoft-torching world, that is...) through its own form of Guilt By Association.

The production is clear and competent, though. But that's to be expected with pop music.

At the end of the day, this is an absolute nightmare of a record that has such a small horizon of appeal. I feel ashamed to have listened to this, and ashamed to somehow be cut from a similar musical fiber as these guys. The post-H.I.M. crowd might fall to pieces over this, though. But maybe that's the point all along. As for me, I need a shower...