Valhom
Desolation

It's true, I swear, witnesses of the court...

..from this CD, I expected something extremely misogynistic and depressive, ideal conditions to torment one's soul amid anesthetic and painful convulsions. The album's wonderful cover and the title of the work seemed perfect for this, given that it was considered a one-man band like many of the latest generation groups imitating the master of depressive music, the Count Burzum. Then I discovered there are two members, Lord Temptation (voice, guitar, bass, synth) and Lord Deception (drums), a formation later changed to a single member, with Temptation playing all instruments in "Despair" from 2007, the fourth album of this USA-made creation and following this desolate chapter I decided to review here.

Maybe I had a strange impression..! Perhaps..! I hoped to listen to the American relatives of the malevolent and mephitic Leviathan of Wrest, but instead, I had to settle for a good broth without stock cube..

..holy patience..!

"Desolation" falls instead into the usual and overused clichés of a feral black metal, cold, elementary, and canonical, well-played and poorly produced (which for blacksters is a seal of quality and I don't deny it even for myself), with that rotten aura that has always distinguished the genre, strongly settled in the early '90s Norwegian style typical of bands like Emperor and Enslaved. A raw black metal that has very little depressive, a real shame, a missed opportunity given the wonderful graphic and conceptual premises... don't you think, gentlemen of the court? Wouldn't you throw this CD out the window, isn't it so??

But I, on the contrary, say NO..! Gentlemen of the court, do you want to give this well-refined optical support at least a chance to be listened to, or do you judge the music a priori without having heard it? Because after the initial disappointment that seems understandable to me, I admit that I even liked the album if taken in small doses..! It's smooth and listenable throughout its 10 songs divided into forty-five minutes, don't you consider that a good thing? I think so..!

For what I said at the beginning of the review, I don't venture to recommend it with my eyes closed but.. I simply tell you that I feel like listening to it, and that's no fault..! It's a bit like those CDs that start slow and you think: "noooo, I can't make it to the end, I'll turn it off by the third...!!!" but after the third track, you start to think.. uh! It's not so bad after all..!!! It's pleasantly listenable and they know how to play well even if they don't invent anything new, even if they are extremely repetitive and derivative with ideas equal to zero point zero repeating infinitely. In short, dear gentlemen tasked with judging the goodness of this product, "desolation" is a good homemade black bread decently built, fairly successful in some parts, a certain taste in compositions that never hurts, and from time to time, a female voice with a classical setting appears, not very successful in my view, but the attempt is still appreciable. So, have I convinced you? What do you say, gentlemen of the court, would you like to give it a distracted listen?

A little clemency, come on..!