My problem is, I think Gnosticism—a prominent heretical movement of the 2nd-century Christian Church, partly of pre-Christian origin, quoth the Oxford American—is way cool. It’s kind of a big hobby of mine. So I said, sure, Gnostic, it’s obviously black metal, lets give it a spin.

And it is black metal. It definitely is. It’s just, that’s all it is. It’s really, really poorly produced. Most of it, anyway—apparently Hatewar 666 is a compilation of a bunch of different demos and EPs and the like, so there are actually certain tracks—like “Khristened in Blood and Fire”, all two minutes, eight seconds of it—which don’t sound too bad. But then, you’re back to “Bloodwars of Heretic Supremacy,” and it sounds just a tic better than the first track, “Realms of Apollyon,”—that is, like the guitars are coming out of an AM radio that you simply threw out a moving car and hit with baseball bats, before you tossed it in your bathtub, too.

So I’m clicking around here, I’m listening to these fourteen different songs, but I’m not getting anything. I barely remember I’m hearing this record. It’s fast, poorly produced black metal. Nobody can play their instruments that well—the vocalist has a kind of an interesting croak going on—though it’s obvious they’re trying hard. They’re very evil. But we here at MetalReview.com don’t give out points for effort! So, I can’t really think of any reason to buy this record. The shoddy riffs, the shoddy production—Gnostic shoot for evil, but only make it to “irritating”.

Can I turn this off now?