Battles in the Farm

I've listened to this album countless times and I'm left scratching my head. When you look at the page on here you'd be quick to dismiss them as a joke band and you would be right. The problem with Swine of Satan and it's sole musician Christian Farmer is that despite the overtly stupid lyrics and themes, the instrumentation, vocals and most of all the production are too good for this to be a shits and giggles band. The production and instrumentation on this is even better than some serious black metal albums.

The music quality on this can be classified as melodic black metal. I also do by proclaim something. Christian Farmer is the Burzum or the Varg Vikernese of satire black metal. No, I shit you not. While most bands especially black metal bands with humorous lyrics fail, Christian Farmer can actually play the guitar, play the bass, play the drums, do the keyboards and programming, and sing. Despite doing all this he still manages to keep the melody and harmony in the songs.

I'm not about to do a track by track review, but will instead discuss some highlight songs.

First of all this entire album concept is about eeviil pigs taking over the farm from the christian farmers. Sound stupid? Trust me it is. Fortunately SoS manage to make the music so damn good that I can't help but actually laugh at the lyrics and not the instrumentation.

The album starts off with the song "Battles in the Farm". The intro is pretty stupid. Imagine if you will that it's midnight on a farm and a huge thunderstorm is sending thunder, lighting and a plethora of rain. A group of pigs huddle together as you hear their sounds. Then we hear low chanting as if you were actually at some ritual, and a very sinister voice proclaims "Swine of Satan! I hail thee. Tomorrow is the day when our king the horned pig shall return. So together we shall now kill the Christian farmers!"

After a few more seconds of pig oinking it blasts into a melodic black metal song with furious rhythmitic drumming, and the guitars playing some catchy black metal riffs. The vocals actually fit with this type of music, as he sometimes tries to imitate various barnyard animals. At the 3:30 mark there's a slow down where all the instruments and the vocals get slow and start building up speed.

The next highlight song is the song Leaks of Doom. Lyric wise this one is the stupidest of the lot. It's about impaling Christian farmers on vegetables. No I shit you not, please laugh or cry. This song almost has a more doom black metal feel. It starts off with either a really down tuned guitar or a really sweet bass intro. The whole of the song is a black thrashy type riffs which vary into short slides, and intricut small scales. At the 2:20 mark the song goes into a spoken word montalouge. We hear two people talking in some language, the music is softer and slowed down and soft, then boom! At the 3:29 mark things really pick up with a great fucking guitar solo.

Musically wise the dumbest song is their cover of Burzum's "Lost Wisdom". I get the feeling they're parodying him being in prison, because suddenly the guitars have been replaced by keyboards and the vocals are now sing songy and way hi-pitched. Overall this cover just sounds stupid and the album loses points because of it.

In short of you can get past the idea of the lyrics then I'm sure you'll find a nice little treat for your ears. The album is free from their site so you won't be losing anything.

Overall 85/100