Cursing Your Will to Live

This album is nothing but pure hatred and disgust for everything that is alive, and most likely everything that isn't as well.

The music on this album is very aggressive. It certainly does create a sense of intense hatred. The black metal that Dodsferd plays certainly sounds a little like "black n' roll." A lot of the riffs are very catchy and melodic. The music on this album never lets up for a second, continuously attacking the listener viciously with its rapid tremolo picking. The vocals just spit hatred. Wrath certainly has improved in terms of vocals compared to previous albums. Of all the Dodsferd albums on this one his voice sounds the most hate filled. The drumming is actually quite important in this album. The drums are well played and have a very great flow with the guitars and keep the songs rolling along. The songs are relatively long and some may find them repetitive but this is an excellent thing to just keep the emotions pouring out into the music. There is a song in the middle of the album which is more of a noise track. Just consists of the most tormented howling and shrieking vocals I have ever heard. The song "Hypocritic Shitfuckers still breathing" is an amazing start to the album with crazy fast but catchy riffs, with lyrics spitting fury. The drums when they kick in with the amazing cymbal crashes that make u bang your head along with the riffs is really amazing. Wrath really does know how to create excellent catchy really pissed off black metal. This song would have to be my favourite on the album.

I would call this album Dodsferd's best and certainly an amazing album to listen to for excellent somewhat catchy black metal and for when you are really pissed off at something. Just make sure there aren't any people around you, you don't want to get charged with murder.

Hot on the heels of Fucking Your Creation, Dodsferd would commit a further 2007 atrocity called Cursing Your Will to Live. Yeah, the guy's got a pretty negative and nihilistic attitude towards anyone reading his album title, but then, this is black metal, so the modus operandi should be a shock to no one reading it. To Wrath's credit, though, when he puts out a pair of albums in a single year (which he will do again), he at least offers something different. Aesthetically, Cursing Your Will to Live is a more barbaric, aggressive assault than Fucking Your Creation, which at its most intense was about as heavy as one of the flimsier riffs here, and ultimately I must admit that I rather enjoy this brutal facade more than either of its predecessors.

A few of the song titles are also lengthened here to the point of hilarity, almost like a parallel, grim mirror to the naming conventions a lot of indie rock, emo and metalcore bands used to use near the dawn of the 21st century. I mean: "You Called it Resurrection, I Call it a Fairytale for Human Parasites, Your Kind!", "Failure Was Described as Religion, as Heresy" read more like lyrics than titles, but to be honest they create a more unique aesthetic than the prior albums. The use of session musicians here makes the album that much stronger, and alive, or at least offering more veins to cut and arteries to pump plasma onto its canvas of distinct negativity. Songs like "Hypocritic Shitfuckers Still Breathing" and the title track are unerring assaults on the listener, loaded with blasting propulsion and angry guitar patterns that, while predictable, do the devil's business with pride, further securing Dodsferd's position on the spectrum of escalating competence and honoring the band's clear Norwegian influences (and Bathory).

Now, I admit that some of the songs here still suffer from the menstrual bloat inherent on the longer tracks of Fucking Your Creation. This album is, after all, 67 minutes long, because many of the compositions are 8, 9, or close to ten minutes...and few of them deserve to be. Such open and crushing black hostility can be accomplished with far less time to the satisfaction of the audience, and I got the feeling several times that a song should have ended HERE, or THERE, and it just kept on battering away. To combat this unwelcome engrossment, though, Dodsferd ensures that the tracks contain some degree of variation. "Under a Broken Cross, I Buried Your World", for example, is an eerie dark ambient piece with all sorts of ghastly vocal abominations, samples and weird, looping tones. "I Kept Standing With Disgust" is just under 3 minutes of admirable, hyperactive aggression which I wish had reflected more of the record's content. And though it's a bit fattened, at almost 10 minutes, "Standing at the Ashes of a Forsaken Kingdom" is perhaps the most sinister track on the album, with its glinting and evil dissonant feeds of streaming knives cast in perfect union to Wrath's howling and rasping.

Ultimately, this is the first decent Dodsferd outing, with Wrath finally coming into his own as a songwriter who can bring the pain to a degree comparable with his influences. Where the prior albums had difficulty coming across as appreciably 'evil' or volatile, this one is pretty much pure hatred that would force even his most jaded detractors into begrudged smirks of respect. A certain level of cellulose still needs to be sliced from the bottom of a half-dozen tracks here, and you can definitely feel a chunk or two of pestilent 'filler' in between the better bits, but for the most part, it's easy to sink those sharpened molars into the album's ribs and sup upon its succulent spite.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

My first introduction to Dodsferd came when reading a magazine in Barnes and Nobles. I don’t remember exactly which magazine, but I think it was Terrorizer, or, maybe Metal Maniacs, or, perhaps, Decibel…well, it doesn’t really matter which. At the time I was just getting into black metal. The magazine was interviewing Wrath about, you guessed it, Dodsferd. Now, most black metal musicians aren’t renowned for their intelligence and subtlety, but Wrath was truly an interview gem. He was just about as conceited as any person I’ve ever met. He consistently made statements like, “Only Wrath is good enough for Dodsferd!” or, “Only Wrath understands Dodsferd!” In addition, throughout the whole thing he kept talking about how true Dodsferd was, and saying stuff like, “Dodsferd is darkness!” and other comments to that effect. The whole time he was making it sound like some form of satanic creation that only he was able to comprehend due to its depthless darkness and unfathomable kvlt-ossity. I got Dodsferd expecting some of the darkest and most hateful music I’d ever heard.

Well, I got to say, I was god damn surprised when black n’ roll started coming out of my speakers. This album is pretty damn far from the truest black metal album of all time, as Wrath seems to believe. The music is fairly rock influenced black metal, with moderately clear production. Only, Wrath seemed to believe that it was some sort or previously unmatched dark art. Well, in a way, he was right. Whether the music was the darkest thing or not on its own, is one matter, but it sure as hell feels way darker and truer than it has any right to. Wrath’s enthusiasm is evident and infectious and as a result, the album feels pretty damn dark and raw, and whether or not it actually has those qualities doesn’t matter much when you’re in the thick of it. The music is black n’ roll, but doesn’t sound anything like the abortion that is new Satyricon. It’s far closer to the black metal side, and instead of being blackened rock, it is far closer to slightly bouncy black metal.

The guitars mostly play tremolo picked riffs. They are pretty varied and are all highly melodic, while still retaining an aggressive edge. There are numerous guitar breaks, but they thankfully don’t get old. The bass is inaudible, as is common with black metal of this kind. The drums are excellent. They mostly blast, but they know how to provide some variety and a multitude of different blasts and fills are used to spice things up and keep them interesting. The vocals are aggressive shrieks, which are sometimes drawn out. The lyrics are fairly standard anti religious fair, but they work within the context of the album.

The songs are surprisingly long for this style of black metal, as is the album. The majority of the songs don’t grow old, however, as the songwriting is very good, although not particularly original. The majority of the songs have a melodic main riff that is – dare I say it – somewhat catchy, and will stick in your head for quite a while after hearing the song. While all the songs follow a similar pattern, they are still fairly distinctive and it’s easy to pick out favorites. While the album is pretty damn long for an album of its kind, it never gets boring. Although, I think that a track or two could have been shaved off and left the original experience intact, or perhaps, even stronger. Still, it’s far from a crippling flaw.

Several movie samples are used, and while these are somewhat rare in black metal, they don’t feel out of place. They aren’t your typical horror samples, for the most part, and generally aid the atmosphere of the album. One of the albums only bad tracks is the interlude esque track Under a Broken Cross, I Buried your World, which, while it has an undeniably badass name, is a pointless (supposedly) atmospheric interlude, which consists of nothing but vocal effects and random noises. To make matters worse, the next track begins with a sample, making the interlude utterly pointless.

Cursing Your Will to Live is a very enjoyable album. Is it original? No, not really. Is it (nearly) as dark as Wrath seems to think it is? No. Is it a damn enjoyable black metal album, with some rock influenced parts, and some killer melodic riffing? Definitely.

Standout Tracks: Hypocritic Shitfuckers Still Breathing/ Failure Was Described as Religion, as Heresy / Standing at the Ashes of a Forsaken Kingdom / Your Death, My Propitiation.

I remember reviewing Dodsferd’s last album and totally gushing over the raw black’n’roll sound that main man Wrath executed with such conviction and passion. His output for 2007 so far includes the Fucking Your Creation full-length and a split with fellow grimsters Ganzmord, which are now joined by yet another longplayer, Cursing Your Will to Live. Nothing much has changed over these past few months, it seems; Wrath seems pretty damn set in his ways, and apparently has the ability to churn out reliably well-done black metal in the blink of an eye. One-man black metal bands are one of the most prolific groups on the planet, I swear; Xasthur and Leviathan alone have more than fifty releases between them, and show no signs of slowing down. It just may serve as a testament to the dedication and focus of those who chose to create using such a medium; after all, raw black metal is not for the faint of heart or the social butterfly.

Dodsferd stand out a bit, geographically-speaking. Wrath hails from Greece, home of fellow bible-haters Rotting Christ and femme-black metallers Astarte, and is possibly one of the most annoyingly “kvlt” individuals I’ve ever encountered. I had the dubious pleasure of interviewing him for some magazine or another last year, and while he may not have been pleasant (or even entirely coherent) this dude is dead serious about his work. The disgust and hatred for humanity that he bases his lyrics upon is a legitimate part of his personality, and in an odd kind of way, I respect him for it. At least he believes in the message his music is sending, unlike so many others out there. And what message might that be? FUCK EVERYONE.

Cursing Your Will to Live is venomous, melodically-inclined yet raw as hellfire black metal that will bring to mind equal doses of Satanic Warmaster and vintage Burzum (those pained howls are straight outta Aske) with razor-sharp riffing and a stick-in-your-head kind of catchiness. By now, well-developed, decently-produced, memorable songs about hating everything(especially religion) have become Wrath’s calling card, and this release sees him delivering plenty of them with ease. He’s also partial to movie samples, particularly of the “ironic snippet of Southern preacherman’s sermon” variety, which break things up nicely and stave off the inevitable monotony to which this style of black metal so easily falls victim. This album isn’t much different from the last one, but this isn’t exactly the sort of music in which artistic growth and experimentation are encouraged. Cursing Your Will to Live definitely has less of the “black’n’roll” thing going on, offering more slow-to-mid-paced death grooves buried underneath the fuzz, but there’s nothing truly original going on here. If you have more than a passing interest in the dirtier, more low-fi side of black metal, you’ve heard this a million times before, but it’s still done better than most of it. Definitely worth a listen if you’re into this kind of thing or dig Wrath’s other stuff.