Review of Pentakill album: Smite and Ignite
For the most part, it was decent heavy metal, with some different metal subgenres. I might listen to it some more to see if I can get a better sense of stories rather than just "this item is an item and here's what it does."
- Lightbringer: guitar was a little loose, but good heavy metal.
- Deathfire Grasp: pretty nice power metal, good riffs.
- Ohmwrecker: I don't want to be "that guy," and it sounded okay I guess, but I have to say... too digital.
- Last Whisper: good heavy metal again.
- The Hex Core: I don't think this needed to be a purely instrumental track. It was definitely industrial metal and not heavy metal, somewhere between Static-X and Rob Zombie, both of which I thoroughly enjoy. This track seemed to just kind of meander a lot.
- The Prophecy: Very brief spoken word track; that's fine. I was expecting something like "kill" at the end rather than "heavy metal," but okay.
- Thornmail: Good heavy metal. Reminded me of Dio or Iron Maiden, except for the solo, which was so distorted/overprocessed it might've been played on a keyboard for all I know.
- Orb of Winter: Sigh. See below.
I didn't just dislike "Orb of Winter." This track is bad, and I'm not talking about a bit of a tempo flub here or not enough sustain there. The entire plan for this track is a disappointment and a failure. Did someone see "Winter" in the name and immediately think this was a Christmas album? Are we going to the fuckin' Nutcracker for hot buttered rum? What are the sleigh bells and carolers doing here? Are they helping the Sugarplum Fairy? There isn't the slightest hint of metal in here. This song belongs in a Harry Potter movie. In a Christmas scene. A Hogsmeade visit or something, with a bunch of scenery shots and falling snow and magical playfulness. The fact that someone brainstormed this and pitched it to people who thought it was a good goddamn idea is outright offensive. How did that conversation even go?
-"Orb of Winter... hmm... what does one do in winter?" -"Well, what I do in winter is I celebrate Christmas in Louisiana with my in-laws. We spray some fake snow around the porch, then go inside and watch a few minutes of the Nutcracker before changing the channel because we don't get what's going on." -"PERFECT! WE'RE GONNA SUGARPLUM THE SHIT OUT OF THIS METAL ALBUM!" -"ok cool"
Now, don't get me wrong; I understand that it's perfectly normal to skip a track from an album every now and then. I skip "Journey to the Promiseland" and "1-2-3-4" by 3 Inches of Blood because they're purely acoustic and I just can't bring myself to be interested in them. I skip the acoustic version of "Seasons" by DragonForce because it's a cover of a song played with real guitars on the same album and it just seems kinda redundant. I skip "Americon" by Slayer because, even though they try to make it brutal, I get an attack of the giggles when I hear Slayer complaining about blood for oil like a hippie (they're getting old).
But "winter = Christmas = Nutcracker" on a purportedly heavy metal album is just idiotic, and there is a difference between being a little out there and being stupid. It's not even difficult to connect winter and metal: metal was developed in regions that get very cold. Metal events can occur in such an environment, like snow in the beard, spilled blood becoming frozen, ice in the longship's rigging, lost travelers huddling around a fire while the wind howls around them, etc.
I plan on checking out the next album, Grasp of the Undying, tomorrow.
TL;DR: Fine except for the WTF.
