Review TotalSelfHatred - Apocalypse in Your Heart 2011

When it comes to doing really bad music, I think it somehow feels like a bigger achievment to do something that really sucks compared to something really good. Of course it demands a lot from an artist to make an album really good, seen percentuale it's very few albums that are really, really good. But the same comes for really, really bad ones. Most of the albums do have somewhat of a quality or something that is decent in them. So to achieve an album without it is pretty hard. Hallowed have found 11 out of somewhere around 500 albums that lacks every inch of quality since changing to our new point system and that means about 2%. To decide that you will make the record even though it sounds absolutely horrible is quite an achievement. Especially if you consider all processes around the release - the recording, mixing, mastering and to get a record label to release it. I especially think it's a huge achievement to put your self through the process enough times to get your shit finished and past all this steps, never to stop and think "what the hell am I doing? I must be totally fucking insane to carry on doing this album!"

Well, this is a fucking excuse for a band. TotalSelfHatred, you can almost hear it on the name that 'Apocalypse in Your Heart' will never be good enough to sound like 'Metallica', 'Apetite For Destruction', 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' or any other really classic album that will stick with us as long as this modern age last. And no surprice when you turn it on - it honestly sounds like the worst thing I've ever heard recorded on an album! It sounds worse than twelve drunken teens, which are suffering from tone deafness, and tries to sing a cappella. And that's true even if the drunken, tone dead teens were singing a cappella with mechanical larynxes. One almost yearn for a possibility to hear hippos mate rather than hearing this album again. I can actually think of a few things that I rather do than hearing this album again, like going to LV-426 and study the wild life. Or staying a winter at the Overlook Hotel. Or book an appointment with the dentist Alan Feinstone. Or going to Isla Sorna for a Carribean holliday. They might seem extreme, but believe me - after hearing this album you would also do them rather than hearing 'Apocalypse in Your Heart'.

The album starts with the worst two songs on the album and luckilly the album only improves from there. However, talking about improvement here is like saying it's better to be stabbed by a ten inch blade instead of fifteen. It's like "Oh, how merciful of you to torture me less painful". And the torture we're talking about here is a 50 minute long messy extreme metal distributed on seven songs where the shortest track, notice I said shortest, ends at 5.19. If you have any sort of knowledge in extreme metal, you know that most songs in the genre are fairly short and migh stretch it a bit in one or two songs, often an instrumental or slower song. The reason for this is that most bands realize that songs that are too long only gets frustrating to hear. Which also results in very few black and death metal albums with a running time past 40 minutes. TotalSelfHatred seems to think that the music they play are so worthy hearing in long cycles that most of the songs on this album are 6-7 minutes long.

To describe what can be heard on 'Apocalypse in Your Heart' is not easy, but there are a few things that comes to mind. Like "construction site", "free pre-school instrumental practice" and "Lemmy Klimister hits himself on the thumb with a hammer". And the best description is to put all these together: Lemmy loudly cursing after hitting his thumb with a hammer on a construction site that on which they're building a new pre-school classroom. He was probably disturbed by the children playing with the instruments without the knowledge in how to play them.

This album is really terrible! There is absolutely nothing to give credit to. Nothing to build on and develop to a forthcoming album or anything to attract a group of people that might call them selves fans of the band. Mostly I think it's a bit insensitive to review albums that I don't like and publish my dislike for everyone to see when a group of people has put their heart and soul in putting it together. But with bands like TotalSelfHatred I don't need to feel that because there can't possibly be anyone that has put either this or that in this album. It feels like a result of someone that wanted to see how badly music can be that get released on an album. I feel most sorry for the record label that has put their money in the album, but on the other hand no one has forced them to do so. That decision is most likely taken by people that knew what they were doing and in context of that one can feel that they get what they deserve by torturing reviewers with indescribably shitty sucking crap like this.

Seriously, I know that only because I don't like this there's nothing saying that anyone else couldn't do so. But the thing is that I really look for good and bad things in the albums I review. You might feel that the reviews in Hallowed are only joking about and don't take anything seriously - and to an extent that is true, But we really do our homework with every album that's reviewed. We do a thorough research and listen to every album at least five times. Often 10-15. And we are very careful in making clear what is good and what isn't and why we think so with each album. Even though all of this might be burried in a lot of wierd parables and metaphores and other re-writes. But I really can't find anything in this album that anyone could like. The few things that doesn't sound worse than anything you could imagine are drowned in a terrible sound or can't be heard because of all the noises made by the vocalist drows it. These noises are quite similar to the noises made by a magpie when it's hunted by a herd of ravens and gets bitten in the wings.

If anyone would give me this album I'd rather shoot myself in the head with a big gun than taking it. I would rather pour a can of petrol over me and set fire to myself than hearing someone play it. I would rather lie down in front of a combine harvester and run myself over than owning it. And I would rather be caught under a truck as it drives across Alaska than to see it. Without doubt, it's the worst record I've heard since I started to review albums nine years ago and I rather drink acid and corrode from the inside than to go on living if I can't forget the horrible sounds of this album. This is my new definition of how bad anything can sound. Sorry Endstille, Benighted and I Shalt Become - you've just been degraded.

HHHHHHH

TotalSelfHatred Apocalypse in Your Heart

TotalSelfHatred
Apocalypse in Your Heart