Neithan: Oh happy day, there we go again. Apart from the re-release of ‘Black Desolate Winter’ Displeased also reissues the demos from 1998 and 2000 called ‘Misanthropic Isolation (1998) and ‘In The Heart Of The Rainforest’ (2000), which were (thank god / satan for that) not available anymore: and then to think that these demos were released in only small numbers on CD-R back in the days.
Well, yes, Striborg: what can I say about it? That the band in itself is responsible for 50% of Lords of Metal ‘this month’s worse’ albums? Yes, but as a reviewer I have to try to write an objective review (which is never 100% possible) and leave my prejudice towards this band aside. What strikes me is that on the demos Sin Nanna hardly uses the ambient elements, only in the intros. Ambient passages are something from the past years, where Striborg showed that there is a big difference between trying and succeeding. Nope, the demos are still filled with raw nihilistic black metal in the vein of mighty Burzum. And now I can hear that even back in the demo era the songs sounded rather flawless, although it is less annoying than other material I heard. And let us be fair, it can’t be that in eight years one has hardly grown as a musician, especially not when releasing so many albums and other sound polluting media, and by no progress I mean both regarding composing and playing!
By now Striborg has released like twenty five demos and albums (although these also sound like demos by the way) or so, and after having reviewed several of them here is what I have to say: give a Norwegian guy all the albums, let him pick the best parts out of it, play it and record it in a decent manner for a change and trust me, you might end up with one great album filled with grim nihilistic black metal. Does this mean that Striborg does have some talent after all? No, because it would yield only one great album, and the leftovers would consist of enough noise to fill twenty-four albums more, which is totally not worth the money. Nevertheless I am afraid that soon we’ll be treated to yet another release by Striborg regarding his paste of releasing. To those who actually collect Striborg and still miss these two demos, well, buy it for the sake of the collection. To all others: I am sorry, but as much as I support the underground, I would not dare to advise you to buy this monotonous and poorly played ‘music’. Nevertheless it gets a better score than on average because at least those wining ambient parts are lacking, and as such we now get stuck with just poorly written en performed, flawless nihilistic black metal.
Maak home
Bookmark