Rating: 5.0

Country: Sweden

Release Date: 2003

Record Label: No Colours

Track list:
1. Ninth Nocturnal Departure
2. Commanding Armageddon
3. Hours of Eternity and Death
4. Dark Northern Winters
5. Descending
6. I am the Plague

Band Website: Pest

Pest - Desecration

Necro: Guitars, vocals, drums
Equimanthorn: Guitars, bass

These guys like Darkthrone. A lot.

To my knowledge there are three Pests as well as a number of bands which are named Pest in their home language like the Finnish Vitsaus. Surprisingly most Pests are actually rather original.

This Pest is not. At least not on this release (their later albums are apparently a lot more original). This is like a great melting pot of Darkthrone's four classic albums, with a thicker production and a slight Swedish touch. It's actually pretty fun guessing which riff is from which Darkthrone song. It could make for an excellent drinking game (‘that's from Transilvanian Hunger!' ‘no, doofus, it's from Skald av Satan's Sol!' ‘Bah, what's the difference?' ‘Tsk, tsk, take an extra drink for punishment').

Ahem. I was reviewing an album.

These guys are very enthusiastic and catchy I must say and… who the fuck am I really trying to kid here. This is almost a freaking covers cd with new titles and lyrics (which places it uncomfortably close to plagiarism). There are no, I repeat, NO riffs here which weren't done already on Darkthrone's seminal early black metal albums.
The same goes for drum patterns.
The same goes for the freaking vocal lines!
Okay there is an exception. Track five is a Burzum song. Silly me, must have fallen asleep to miss that one.

Track three sounds like a mid-period Carpathian Forest song for a while, before turning into grindier Transilvanian Hunger worship. Then track four is 100% the same as Under a Funeral Moon's title track, except the lyrics; which doesn't mean I can't sing along with the original lyrics, since the new lyrics are placed in such a way as to sound exactly like the old vocalizations. The second song is directly lifted from Panzerfaust (it's the Celtic Frost rip-off that's repeated twice on PF. It's replayed almost note for note here).

Funny how the disc says ‘No trends!' and ‘No compromise!', since that is exactly what this album presents; trends and artistic compromises. This disc exemplifies everything wrong with ‘nowadays black metal'. They play their instruments well, sound good, are catchy, but aren't doing anything which hasn't already been done better by legions of predecessors.

I will mince no more words on this.

Next!

September 17th, 2007