Malfeitor/Birch Mountain
Dawn of Silent Decay (split)

This is the second time I review a split album on this hallowed website and it is the second time it is a release by Hellthrasher Productions. The bands in question are very related being that two thirds of the people are involved in both bands, with Malfeitor having only released a demo before this one and the other guys one album, the tracks are from the demo and the album with five tracks apiece. The cover art is rather nondescript, not really saying anything but considering the track record of the label I think it is easy to guess that it is some kind of death metal thing. Thing is though that it is only that genre of the more primitive kind that make split albums anyway, also the concept of split albums is a bit of a strange one today. At the time of the vinyl they made sense with one band on one side and the other band on the other side but on a CD the concept is strange. This is a rather old release by now but for that I blame the apple device I use to play my music during the days, so blame that shit for company for this review being late. But still I was only able to find just two reviews when searching for this album on the web so it may not be the most popular yet.

Considering that there are two bands on this release you might expect it to be very varied and in a sense you could say that it is but in another you can say that it isn’t. The first band on the release is Malfeitor and their music is kind of classical primitive death metal with a typical basement production with raw sound and not much in terms of melody and with a singer gurgling away in the most guttural way he is possible, not really unique or ground breaking in any way. The other band Birch Mountain are a bit more melodic having flashes of melodic guitar playing and stuff, vocals are more hardcore than Malfeitor’s vocals which can be seen as strange considering that it is the same vocalist. The bands are despite small differences quite similar in style and most of all the production is very similar having a rather cheap sound. The album has ten tracks which are five apiece and it plays for about 40 minutes.

The problem with releases like this is that they are not really consequent with those two bands so the album has two parts even though that in itself is no real problem the quality of these bands is quite low, Birch Mountain do have some good ideas with the melodic touches but the vocals here are just awful most of the time. Malfeitor is just generally uninteresting and too generic it sounds like most anything out of this genre and that just isn’t interesting enough, just a dull dreary release not really adding anything to the musical world, it feels lame and powerless, cheap and amateurish with nothing of interest.

So with one album being really uninteresting and one having something of interest it still ends up a pointless album that doesn’t add anything to the world of music. I would really be more amused looking at paint drying or getting the flu.