The Arrival Of Satan
Passion Sodomy Terror

The Arrival Of Satan, sometimes it is just difficult not to enter into the work of reviewing an album without preconceptions, I mean using Satan in any form in relation to an album is generally a signal of a rubbish band. There are always exceptions to a rule though but the look of this album makes me think of those troglodyte basement cave productions that usually suck worse than receiving a birthday telegram from Zinedine Zidane. From the look of it, nothing about this album looks interesting, but as a reviewer I cannot just dismiss the album. TAOS is a French band and this is their third album, they are a band that apparently have lyrical themes that deal with darkness, depression, suicide and madness – interesting wouldn’t you say?

It sounds as it looks on the cover; it is a mouldy basement sounding black metal album of the primitive kind. It is not possible to make out what the singer is on about except for a small part of the ending track and what he states there is just utter stupidity. It is hard to imagine that this band appeal to the intellectual, with songs named things like Vagina; I don’t imagine that many rocket surgeons listen to this band. Good thing is that the album is kept fairly short with 40 minutes playing time even though it is more than enough to grow bored with the monotony and simplicity of this album. Blackmetallicus dumicus is probably the name according to Carl Linnaeus’ naming scheme of binomial nomenclature.

If you are one of those very few who enjoy troglodyte black metal, this might be just the thing for you – for us who like our music a little more well produced and less power drill sounding it is just another album to skip. Normally I try and find horrific things to compare the band albums to, things to do in order to avoid listening to it. This is to me a musical version of daesh but thankfully with musical terrorism you can just avoid listening to it, if you are stuck where the more violent terror happen it is much more difficult to avoid it. That is a redeeming feature. But honestly I must state that despite having forced myself through this album a few times – and still being haunted by its awfulness – I cannot really see any real redeeming feature of it, it is just plain awful.

I recommend that all who likes their music sounding like it is made on instrument and maybe with someone singing to avoid this album, to keep as long a distance from its terror as you possibly can. At the same time I hate being this dismissive of a band that puts down time, money, effort, heart and soul into their work; it feels wrong in a way. But I cannot be dishonest either and maybe these kind of band take solace in the fact that most people dismiss and hate their music, it might make them feel like they are misunderstood geniuses. I also must take into account that most of those who read Hallowed has a musical preference that is at least vaguely similar to mine and that those who like this kind of music belongs to a very small minority and I doubt that minority has a large presence among our readers so the average music fan, or even metal fan will not find this album particularly agreeable but maybe they are just misunderstood geniuses – In guess it depends on where you are coming from, I think the album it rather terrible.

HHHHHHH