Empty
Etica Profana Negativa

I think I only need one word to describe how bad this album actually is: Bingo. And if that's too cryptic for you then I can make an elucidation and tell you that it's just as weary as it is to play bingo.

The lyrics are just about as meaningful too, similar to the bingo callers "two little ducks" (22) and "christmas cake" (38) Mr Drizzt grunts around themes like the wakefulness having a terrifying lucidity and dying stars having signs under which he was born. Just like after playing bingo, this album leaves me hollow and empty inside and I've been known for saying I'd rather get cancer than play bingo again, which honestly is exactly what I think of this album too. Years of radiotherapy and constant hospital visits sound more appealing than being forced to have this album in my ears. Or another bingo game.

It's not that I hate the album or think it sounds horrible in every way, it's more the fact that it's so meaningless. I don't think it's the same piece of shit as let's say Vomitchapel, which is just plain crap on every level - I just can't see what it is they're trying to achieve. The music just isn't getting anywhere, it sounds plain bad overall - as if they've recorded some sort of background track and then forgot to do the main music or at least put it on the album. The whole thing sounds so plain and grey - no contrasts at all, no personal engagement. Had they been designers they'd picked one shade of grey and then used it on everything! Furniture, walls, the car, the clothes, the curtains and other textile… why they've chosen to be colourless is beyond my knowledge but this just makes the album an empty parenthesis. I get no impressions and the album leaves nothing behind, if it weren't for the increasing numbers in the count-column on my iTunes I wouldn't know I'd heard it at all. It's just as empty as the name suggest.

I'm not saying the music is useless - I'm sure it can please the more metal-enthusiastic lift traveller or the metalcore man as a lullaby but hardly to make the blood rush in any other way than back to your heart as you save energy sleeping. The sad thing about it is how the musicians seems to have taken the time and energy to do something with the album - they've written melodies and music that's something more than just the average black metal-crap of the primitive kind. Unfortunately they've forgot to add something that makes their creation interesting. There's no fire, not even a glow, and no drama. Just like when you play bingo, it's just numbers that you mark on your cards while you sit there and shorten the time you have left to live. To find something that engage you less than 'Etica Profana Negativa' (besides playing bingo, of course) is definitely not easy. Maybe impossible? At least the really shitty albums have the common decency to annoy you or urge your 'turning off emotions'. This album, however, is no more than a shrug - if that - and after playing all the 43 minutes that it takes these seven tracks to reach the end I really don't care wether I get cancer or not.

Us writers on Hallowed have a tendency to exaggerate things and take things to the extremes but this album is pretty much the opposite. 'Etica Profana Negativa' is as far from extreme as you get - the only thing I can think of that is less engaging is an empty jar of glass… or a game of bingo.

HHHHHHH