Ordog

Black Funeral are a band I have heard a lot about, but very little of. Bought at a time when I would buy just about any "out there" black metal release, Ordog looked like it would appeal to me, given my adoration of other industrial BM bands like Blut Aus Nord and Spektr. And worst comes to worst, it could be great in the "so bad it's actually really good way" like, say, Striborg. So what could I not like?

Almsot all of it, actually.

I tend to like raw production, especially in black metal since it makes the music seem more sincere for some odd reason, but this is past the point of raw and into the realm of ludicrous. If I wanted to listen to noise I'd put in fucking Merzbow. This may even have been engineered to sound worse than it actually is - it wouldn't surprise me given the "blacker than the blackest black, times infinity" attitude of "Baron Drakkonian Abaddon" (black metal names just keep getting worse and worse...). The drums are absolutely atrocious, the vocals obnoxious, and almost everything else is just a blur of white noise with something approaching a melody infrequently surfacing. I believe it was Erik Thomas who put it best; to paraphrase, "this sounds like an untuned AM radio." Pretty grim, eh? It sounds like Spektr without any sense of composition or musical taste. Don't ask me to recall anything remotely memorable about this release even after multiple listens (a chore if ever there was one), because I can't remember a single thing that stood out.

However, credit must be given when it is due. The lyrics are outstanding, and the Baron certainly achieved his most likely goal of pissing everyone off. Plus, the ladies he got to work with him on this album are quite the eye-candy....if these last couple of sentences are an indication, I'm trying to find anything particularly good about this album on a musical level and failing.


To be totally fair though, this is pretty hilarious, as are those people who strive for a deeper meaning in all of this. Albums like this are why people make fun of black metal.

Firstly, if you get this album, expect a noise album, not a black metal album. I'm giving this album 11 because: I kind of like the genre noise and some parts are kind of funny. Why this album is getting more is because, after a while it gets really, really boring.

I had heard this album was a noise album and decided I would check it out. However, Mike Ford isn't a very good noise artist. Good noise artists use several noises in unison and kind of get a song going through all the noises used in harmony which is pretty cool. To be honest, I wasn't really expecting that, I was expecting Darkthrone's Order of the Ominous being played at to me for just over 50 minutes. I thought this would have been quite a unique, dreadful and almost frightening experience. So I definitely thought this album was something that I had to listen to. After all, not many albums will give you that sort of listen.

However, I came away pretty disappointed with the album as a whole. This album is basically: ultra distorted guitars, which seem to have been distorted even more by sound effects, really strange clanging, banging and rattling noises, a vacuum cleaner going in the background and the occasionally screech and beeping noise. If you want an idea of want this sounds like, I suggest you download: Voice of a Tortured Skull by Mayhem. That's pretty much what this album sounds like, minus the vocals of course.

Speaking of which, there is only one song which contains vocals, so for the most part, this guys just going aaaarrrr arrrrrr gggggghhhhh, throughout most of the album. The vocals are kind of in the background and also seem to have some sort of distorted effect added to them. That's basically the long and short of the album.

So finally, this album does have some strangely amusing parts and the occasional cool sound effect, but overall this album is pretty damn bad. The fact that this album is really just a bunch of noises thrown together means that a) the album is boring and you could probably get the same effect if you listened to your mum vacuuming and b) anyone could make this album. So, don't get this album, it's not worth the money.

Conclusion: the above is not recommended for purchase or download.

Black Funeral have always puzzled me. Their sole member, occultist extrordinaire is this guy Michael Ford, who has written some lengthy, interesting books and seems to really know his satan(s), prides his band on being the only real USBM. Judging by the song titles and artwork, he has clearly also applied this knowlege to his music(?).
So you would be expecting something dark and compelling, right?

Ha. No.

This was my first taste of Black Funeral, and I was extremely disillusioned.

The entire CD is a mess of buzzing, clanging, scraping, and static, and that's it. There are these "ambient" breaks inbetween the songs that aren't any better and only seem to my malaise as I listened. Several times it even occurred where everything was so mashed together that all it was was white noise, literally, because the production is not only absent, but seems to have delibrately been made awful by pseudo-distortion. Mike says this CD is supposed to be 'ritualistic' and hellish, but it sounds extremely similar to the following things simultaneously for under an hour:
-A retard playing a badly tuned guitar using a nailfile for a pick
-Pennies in a blender
-The lead singer of Teratism drunk at a frat party
and that is basically the gist of it.
I mean, this isn't even aesthetically pleasing; No cool pictures in corpse paint, no tremlo picking.
Basically, this guy would make an interesting noise artist, but this is by no means Black Metal, at least by listenable standards.
If you want good USBM, listen to Abazagorath or even your indie sister pretending to sound like Atilla Csihar.

Yes, it's complete shit, I'm givin' 10% for the cover art and a part of the song Darbingers of Pestilence.
First of all...This band exists since 1993, they have their name to keep, they are known as the "only american true black metal band".
It seems that they think good music will turn them to a mainstream band, because, after all, these black metal bands care about "being true" and completly unknown.

The album:

The cover art is not very bad, still very crappy but it fits the style.
The production, well, it just isn't there. There is no production on this album. And the drums and guitars were computer made, with some sequencer software. (I know many of them, because I work with it), and they didn't take care to at least find a good software to record it well and make it sound the most realistic possible.
Anyway, the guitar lines are nice in some songs, but the problem is that they repeat over and over again! And the bass is shitty, it just follows the guitar, nothing innovative and different. The drums are complete shit, double bass all over, and crappy software sound. The vocals are not bad, BUT, the guy sings in the same way through the whole cd, and he doesn't try to add any feeling to the song.
These songs were supposed to be hatefull, and they failed. They are noisy as hell, not agressive and boring.

Many people will disagree with me. But hey, just take a look at the NON-production. They didn't even have taken care of doing a nice job for the fans (if there is any one) to have a nice sounding album at their hands. After all, we are PAYING for it (if you download, don't complain). If "shitty-noisy-sounding-songs" mean "true black metal" now...we are in the wrong way.
For example...Belphegor is a kick ass band, and they have a top production work on their albums. Are they "less black metal" than any other band?

I wish I didn't buy this complete piece of garbage, don't bother buying it, because it's just noise. I know black metal and listen to it a lot, but this is shitty.