Thursday 1 March 2012

[ALBUM REVIEW] Pergale - Horizontalios Maldos Palaima



Genre - Black n Roll

1. Aš Tave Subadysiu (I Will Stab You)
2. The Addiction Song
3. Sado Mazo Vokietija (Sado Mazo Germany)
4. Viešnamio Harmonija (The Whorehouse Harmony)
5. Viskis (Whiskey)
6. Horizontalios Maldos Palaima (The Felicity of Horizontal Praying)
7. Sado Mazo Vokietija (McKaras Remix)

What’s this then? Another one of these eighties throwback black metal bands dipping their toes into post-punk territory? With that opening bass line I initially thought so, sadly no. Lithuanian’s Pergale refer to themselves as “Victorious Psycho Black Rock”. Any such act who have the gall to affix such an outlandish label onto themselves are going to be either very very good, or extremely fucking bad. I really hoped for the former, especially after the opening, but my head was telling me the opposite. It was right, this really isn’t very good at all, in fact at time’s it’s hard not to burst out in fits of laughter or cringe at how contrived, awkward and downright fucking stupid it sounds.

Now I’m no metal prude, I have a lot of time for any band who brings in outside influences of any sort against the metal grain, but truth be told more often than not it just doesn’t work. Horizontalios Maldos Palaima could be categorized as some sort of bastardization of Lifelover and Finntroll, only astoundingly somehow manage to set aside everything that’s good about those bands, intentionally ignore them and focus on the absolute worst aspects of both bands, add in a plethora of jazz and commercial rock influences and the result is this. Whether it’s the eye wateringly harsh vocals which at times are fucking atrocious or the sickly sweet guitar rhythms which keep raising their ugly head from time to time, Horizontalios is just too obscenely ludicrous to take seriously.

Redeeming qualities are few and far between; the bass work is the best thing about this release but sticks out like a sore thumb. The black metal passages are competent enough when present, no more, certainly nowhere close to Lifelover’s level anyway. “The Addiction Song”, a wispy piano number and the acoustic “Viskis” are the only two decent tracks on here. The rest are just completely forgettable. It sounds like the sort of thing you’d get after placing four musicians from random backgrounds into a bar and kept pouring alcohol down their throats until they were inebriated enough to come up with something. And the result? Forty minutes of shallow rambling nonsense which is completely devoid of any substance whatsoever.

It’s the type of album where the only thing you can extract from the end of it is a state of bewilderment and a thumping headache. There’s many more bands out there doing this ‘Black n Roll’ thing much better, and not many better than Vried. Some may even call this ‘Depressive Black ‘n’ Roll’. To me it’s just fucking depressive.

1.5/10

Originally written for Metalcrypt

No comments:

Post a Comment