Siebensünden / Teratologen

Although, I'm not usually prone to reviewing bad albums that I don't like. I felt I had to warn anyone who dared venture into the realm of Siebensunden about the near-genocidal crime against music that this is. I bought this because I had read reviews about it being like SunnO))) and being very good and kvlt and all that, so I thought I'd go out on a whim and purchase it. Little did I know what I was in for.

There is 2 songs on this album. Both of which clock in at about 20 minutes. Both of which are in Swedish, and written by a novelist. The first song "Herrens Djuriska Njutning" starts with a minute or so of Hissing Noise before going into some sort of basic doom riff, and I mean basic. This isn't too bad. But then the vocalist pipes up and ruins it all. I actually cannot describe how monumentally terrible this vocalist is. I can't actually pin down anything which he sounds like. He is horrifically out of key, and squeaky. You know that bit in the new Slayer song "Psychopathy Red", right at the end, where Tom Araya screams in a squeaky, out of key way for the last line? Imagine that, then mix it with a pre-pubescant child screaming about he wants Ice Cream, and he wants it now. Then add the vocalist from any parody Power Metal band. This in itself could detract from an album, but not make you hate it outright. The problem is that he doesn't shut up. Ever. And I mean EVER. Once he starts, he NEVER shuts up at all, for the whole of the 20 minute song. I cannot stress how much he sings. Every single bloody second consists of him singing. Even worse is, there is no variation on this vocal style AT ALL. The closest we get to variation consists of at about 16 minutes, when there's a spoken word part, which to be honest, just amuses me. The Swedish accent never fails to amuse me (It's the way they say anything with "ooooh" in it which cracks me up the most, though). Also, at about 17 and a half minutes, there is some backing vocals which, god forbid, are worse than this vocalist. He sounds like he's having some sort of allergy-related fit.

At about 6 minutes a new riff comes in and it is even more basic than the other. It reminds me of early Swans, but a shit early Swans. A really shit early Swans. A really really really really shit early Swans, and that vocalist is unleashing his vocal diarrhoea over it as well. This then reverts back to the original riff for what seems to be an hour, before reverting back to this really shite second riff. It takes 12 minutes before a third riff, which is actually a variation of the first riff, played cleanly with the DUNN DUNN DUNN DUNDUNNNNNNNNN bit tacked on at the end. Seriously that DUNN DUNN DUNN DUNDUNNNNNNNN will get on your nerves so much it's unbelievable. And still this vocalist chimes on.

And that's really about it unitl the end of Song 1. The whooshy, electronic noise fades in at the end for a while (Sorry, an age. It's goes on and on and on and on for at least 3 minutes) and that's us. So we're halfway through the album after 20 minutes and we've heard 3 riffs. 2 of which are variations of each other. Oh joy. Actually, this in itself isn't so bad, I enjoy bands such as Burzum and SunnO))) who thrive on repetition, but their key is that they construct good riffs, and actually think about their songs. I would not be surprised if this was written and recorded in an hour, to be honest. But the fact of the matter is that these are not good riffs. These are utterly terrible riffs. They are boring beyond belief, and although they are tolerable for the first 462 repetitions, they get mind-numbingly boring quick. These aren't even bloody riffs, to be honest. This sounds like Tony Iommi, it sounds like his first ever riff, as in when he was age 9 before he's even learned to play the Guitar and he's at a pal's house and strums craply on the guitar without any semblance of how this odd beast works. It actually does sound like these guys have picked up their instruments and not known how to play them, then told that the first jam they do will be recorded and not edited.

In fact, in the second song, the intro doesn't even consist of riffs or even discernible notes. He simply allows the guitar feedback to whoosh about (There's a whooshing on this album. In fact I'm whooshing this vocalist wouls shut up again) and sometimes taps the guitar frets to make odd noises. After about 2 and a half minutes (I'm not joking), we finally get some semblance of notes as the bassist playing a riff. Then the guitarist comes in with a riff that doesn't even make sense. Not only is it in a hideous tuning, but it makes no sense. It seems like he's hitting random frets at random times, and seems to be in the time signature of 567/3. It also has a tone so paper-thin, it doesn't even sound bloody heavy, which kind of defeats the purpose of Drone Metal in the first place. I was going to say that the one saving grace of all this is that the terrible vocalist isn't singing, but as soon as I started to write it, he started shouting. The drummer must have the most boring job in the world, akin to working in a factory all the time, he does exactly the same thing over and over again, although it's a different drumbeat from Song 1, and he has to do the same annoying fill every time.

At about 7 minutes, we get a clean riff, again, which then goes on for 5 minutes while that vocalist sings (if you can call it that) all over it. This song is identical to the first one in every way, bar the challenging drum fill (which is prominant in many an AC/DC song). There's the same annoying guitar sound, same drum beat (bar the aforementioned fill), same clean riff, same stop-start annoyingness, same stupid samples (in Swedish), same shit vocals, same stupid whooshy noises (but they're quieter this time) SAME FUCKING EVERYTHING. This is even fucking longer than the first one, as well. The fact that he seems to keep saying the word "Bukkake" over and over again just adds to the sheer calamity of this album.

The fact that they suddenly decide to hit the same note over and over again at about 18 minutes just gets on my tits so much. This same note goes on for at least 2 and a half minutes, and I am not joking. He just relentlessly hits this same note, at the most mid-paced tempo imaginable until it suddenly stops and you are given a reprieve. It's over finally.

Some have argued that people should focus on the lyrics, and this is true. They are written by a novelist, and the whole point of this collaborative exercise seems to be that he writes the lyrics for which Siebensunden would play around. But they're in fucking Swedish. All of them. There is no translation to be found anywhere. The press release says that this is a critique of modern-day Christianity, but this could be about anything in the world. It could be about Christianity, it could be about how Siebensunden shagged your mother, it could be about the Slave Trade, it could be about Celine fucking Dion for all I know. How are we meant to know? It's in fucking Swedish! That means that the album is lost on 95% of the people who bought it (assuming that 95 people even bought it).

Now it's all looking grim, if I'm honest. The focal point of the album, the lyrics, are sung in a language I can't understand by a vocalist who resembles a dog's squeak toy in his vocal delivery. The guitars don't even make sense, playing riffs usually assembled for your first ever band you and your pals make when you're 11, the bass is practically non-existant, and the drums seem to be operated by a mechanically operated puppet who only function seems to be playing the same drum beat over and over again and making Phil Rudd of AC/DC look like Tomas Haake. There is a full 6 riffs on this album, 3 or 4 of which are variations of each other, the other 2 being variations of each other as well, making a whopping grand total of 2 original riffs over the course of 45 minutes. The structure for both songs seems the same, there isn't one, yet both songs sound exactly the fucking same. I would've written that it's so bad that it's enthralling, but on second listen, it simply isn't. It's laughably bad.

At this point, I should just give this album 0% and go and boil in a stew of my own rage. But the one saving grace of this album is the artwork, which is exquisite. Handdrawn scribbles, it looks really cool and evil, far better than your identikit photoshop job which usually adorns Metal albums these days. But I am not going to give an utterly woeful album a high rating because it "looked nice", so it can have 12% for the artwork.

The only other thing I can think of is just how kvlt this release is. At this point I would like to refer back to my Hefeystos review, where I mentioned the fabled game of "Kvlt Top Trumps", where you and your black metal friends would try and find your tr00est records and see who has the grimmest record collection, based on things such as it's availability, had the members killed anyone, where it came from and what not. This, however, is such a turn-up for the books on the kvlt stakes. It's limited to 100 copies, with hand-drawn artwork. The lyrics were written by a famous Swedish atheistic novelist about the pitfalls of the modern-day church! It's all in fucking Swedish (as I've mentioned several times), both songs last over 20 minutes and there is barely any information about the band or contact details available. But the problem is, this isn't Black Metal, it's Doom Metal, so it doesn't actually matter that much.

In fact, this is a new kind of Doom Metal. Where most Doom Metal is about the crushing end, this evokes something else. The fact that there is no crushing end, it will go on for ever and ever and ever and ever...





...and ever.

If Siebensunden turned up at a gig anywhere in the world, as a first time band who were freshly formed 2 months ago, this could be excused. They would get an unmitigated shower of abuse and laughter, and it would be labelled the "Worst set of all time" and that would be that, end of. But the fact that Siebensunden have been going for nigh on 12 years and yet still seem to have a mental age of 4 when it comes to making songs is inexcusable. I think we have a new rival to Cryptopsy's new album in the category of "Worst Album Ever". Nothing, nothing in my life that I have ever listened to, is as monumentally horrific as this album. It reminds of that joke drone metal song Blood Duster gave away as a download, but this isn't a joke and it's not even funny. This is utterly serious and it's even horrifying for that reason.

Thank God, Allah, Odin, Xenu and any other gods you can think of, that this was limited to 100 copies because this is an utter waste of CD. Those 100 blank CDs could've been used to release some unreleased Bathory songs, or even a new Carcass EP. But no, it wasn't. It was used to release this. Despite this, I feel that we should rip this album onto my PC and send it to every single person in the world as a download and make them listen to it once, then, in a move akin to the decision to keep Auschwitz open to the public, destroy 99 copies of this album and place the other copy in a Gallery somewhere, as a warning from history.