Blood Haven
Religious Suffocation
3.7
Blood Haven records average black metal shittily. Not as shittily as Surrender of Divinity, but certainly shittily enough to make me want to kick them and their producer down the stairs. If I may borrow and paraphrase a quote from a Monty Python skit regarding Fine Australian Table Wines: “This is not a record for listening. This is a record for lying down and avoiding.”
The songwriting is mediocre, so that’s not really the issue. In the hands of a good band it might be listenable, if not interesting, but in the hands of these insipid dolts the stuff is uninspired, trite and downright dull. I get more entertainment from the sound of drawing bathwater.
The musicianship is adequate to make the pointless garbage they seem to want to make, but it’s the production that pretty much relegates this to another half assed attempt to be underground without having to actually not be popular enough not to be. It’s thin. It’s gutless and it’s about as metal as ice dancing. We know you can sound better, we know you try to sound like you can’t. It’s called posing.
Bottom line, don’t buy poser records. It’s just that simple. All crappily recorded music is now just as much a fashion statement as a tattoo on your girlfriend’s lower back or piercing your nutsack; trendy, regurgitated busllshit. It's ready made style for people who can’t drum up their own. My fucking Christ, if Nirvana could record a decent sounding record for less than a grand before there were pro tools and Macs, no one should be suckered into this dried fuck today. Let’s kill the trend, friends.
