Treachery
Self Titled
3.7
Overshadowing a few brief moments of semi-promise with woefully undercooked songwriting and a muddled approach, Treachery seemingly do everything in their power to aggravate the black metal fan with their debut EP. Relegating five minutes of this 23-minute release to a painfully inadequate intro piece, the only area in which this band succeeds is making a bad impression right out of the gate, and then going even farther downhill once the other songs kick in. “Kiss the Fist,” despite being the first “proper” track, is even more pointless than the intro, running at under two minutes in length and offering little more than a couple of cliché black metal riffs and bland drum programming. The awkward screeching vocals are similarly unconvincing, and all the more grating when the weak lyrics occasionally surface into comprehension territory.
The interesting electronic touches in “Bound By Four Entrails,” sounding somewhat Akercocke-influenced, make for perhaps the only enjoyable portion of this EP. Treachery actually manage to achieve some degree of atmosphere and melody here, making it all the more frustrating when they then dive right back into more dull and clumsy black metal tedium with the criminally lame “Could Not Find Her Heart.” Things get even worse on the eight-minute snoozefest that is “Dominion,” which is a complete waste of space on this disc, wallowing through several minutes of asinine minimalist dribble before finally unleashing the “payoff” in the form of more horrible vocals and instantly forgettable riffing.
Nothing about this EP is even worthy of your acknowledgment, let alone your time. The music contained here is entirely devoid of character, poorly produced, and rendered 100% ineffective by its erratic pacing and complete lack of direction or intent. Asking that people actually pay money for this? Now that's Treachery.
