Sowing the Seeds of Suffering

Maybe the most amazing aspect of this release is how identical all the songs sound. “Sowing the Seeds of Suffering” consists of six songs, but if you close your eyes, you could swear they are all the same song. The guitar riff is the same one over and over throughout the songs. It really is a shame because the over all atmosphere that the music evokes is pretty grim and evil.

You could describe the music as a cross between doom and black metal. This band should have tried to make the album sound a bit more diverse and interesting. The vocals lack any kind of power or character; they are flat and get annoying after a while, they are more like a harsh whisper.

The best track on this album is the first one, it is called “Visions” and opens with a very clever Dracula like feel to it and then turns into a great doom-black metal song. Another stand out track is “Dream of Darkness” which at least sounds a little different from the rest of the songs. When I started hearing the album I was impressed and thought to myself, this is awesome! However, once the tracks started flowing, and I kept on hearing the same thing for 42 minutes I started getting extremely bored.

This came out in 1994 when the Norwegian Black Metal scene was in full force, so if you’re a die hard black metal fan and have to acquire every single thing from Scandinavia from that period then get it, but don’t expect anything our of the ordinary.

There is however, one aspect of this album that I thought was great, and that is some of the guitar solos on the songs, very melancholic and interesting guitar solos, you can tell this guy can play his guitar, that’s what makes the fact that the guitar sounds so identical throughout all the songs so incomprehensible.