Review Summary: a dissonant rendering of suckage
Within its weave of fast-paced tremolos that all together never work, its utter failure at uniting rhythm and melody, and a concept that is perhaps lapped up by your typical indie kid proudly displaying his Burzum t-shirt and his newfound love of 'atmospherics', Krallice's self titled is a black metal album that tries and tries to find its footing in a completely unique approach to the watered down genre; although occasional moments of inspired composition poke their ugly heads up through the ruins of Mick Barr's creativity, the album leaves itself as a dissonant and somewhat disconnected piece of music that remains painful to listen to and constantly enjoyable to criticise.
Basing itself on some obscure and ridiculous concept that mostly appeals to those who seem to find emotional depth in the shallowest of places, each overly long track on
Krallice has a single short sentence as the entirety of its lyrical substance, absolutely meaningless in its context and laughable as the literary structure of the album.
Old birds scream of slit throats languages burned by minds / the lesser gods have taken their withered placement back from man are the two lines that comprise the first two tracks, and are so vague in whatever themes they are portraying that one can easily imagine the type of pretentious and arrogant listener who looks for the 'deeper meaning', and connects to the album in ways that would be normally described as 'bullsh
it'. Barr's pretention as a lyricist is further expounded in his abysmal vocal performance, coarse yells over grating musical expression summarising the complete dissonance that truly defines
Krallice.
Although perhaps being considered a constantly melodic composition by some,
Krallice does not seem to ever really fall into place as a something that is remotely enjoyable; the so called 'melody' is non-existant, every tremolo-ed riff penned by Barr disharmoniously coinciding with its fellow guitar and almost constantly failing to provide any sort of assonance that one would associate with the simple definition of music. From the very beginning, with 'Wretched Wisdom',
Krallice just doesn't work, both on the level of its guitar lines, their relationship with each other and their relationship with the completely irritating drumming. To give the album the miniscule commendation, one or two segments throughout the hour plus waste of time of an album seemed to work ever so slightly, but on the whole one could expect there to be absolutely no harmonious correlation between every separate element that comprises the album's musical nature.
It would be folly to further elaborate the complete failure of an album that
Krallice is - if one wished to give it a chance, the album simply speaks for itself. It may be hailed as Barr's output of creative genius, but, with subjectivity aside, how any enjoyment can be found through this utter mess is seemingly beyond rational comprehension. One could experience
Krallice without even listening to it: simply play Darkthrone's
Transilvanian Hunger, Death's
Human and Avenged Sevenfold's
City of Evil simultaneously, all while screaming whatever bullsh
it that comes into your head.
