
Here is the debut release from Ov Hell, T
he Underworld Regime. I have been anxiously waiting for this album for quite some time now, as the band’s lineage certainly suggested that it would be high-quality black metal, as the band is comprised of King ov Hell (cracks me up that he is a primary school teacher in Bergen), formerly of Gorgoroth, Shagrath, Dimmu Borgir’s vocalist, as well as a respectable sundry of session musicians, such as Frost on drums (Satyricon and others), Teloch on guitars (Orcustus, 1349, and others), and Ice Dale on guitars (Enslaved, Audrey Horne, and others). However, upon listening to the album as a whole, I am not sure
why, exactly, I was so enthusiastic about the prospects of the album. I reckon that I was anticipating not so much a left-of-center black metal album, but a by-the-numbers black metal album that was nevertheless furiously paced and composed. Instead, what we have here is a by-the-numbers black metal album that is not particularly ferocious or sonically evil—but King ov Hell and Shagrath in conventional corpse paint and black metal garb on the cover are certainly evil looking enough, but I detect an element of self-parody (or am I just interpreting it this way?). The song composition protocol on the album favors slow to mid-paced rhythms, as well as fast-paced rhythms, replete with gallop drumming and bi-layered raspy vocalizations, etc., as well as a sprinkling of clichéd sounds effects, such as wolves howling and the creak and groan of a ship’s wooden hull, which is then followed by, of course, Benedictine monk chanting. So, parody or not, it is nevertheless a well-executed generic-brand black metal album, and for this reason alone do I recommend it—but it is
hardly an essential album for devotees of the genre.
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