Our Visions of a Holocaust to Be

This isn't really terrible, but it's hardly doing anything to convince the non-NS inclined that this particular political point of view can generate quality music. It's really a pretty solid list of stereotypes about the NS scene in general: ridiculous lyrics, terrible production, and rather suspect instrumental ability. Granted, while the songwriting is pretty solid at times, the whole package even makes me roll my eyes. To be honest, though, it does have its benefits: selling copies of this at local shows has garnered more than a couple incredulous stares from teary-eyed leftists who promptly stopped looking at my items. Quite tragic, really.

The production on this is really bad: not really the rehearsal room style of brackishness you'd normally associate with this genre, but still quite awful. The drums seem to be the main culprit: they're noisy and the cymbals are trashy, and the whole sound is overwhelmed by a sort of granular distortion which makes me think there's some really severe clipping afoot in this mixing job. It kind of sucks because the songs themselves are fairly decently composed. It's somewhat militaristic raw black metal, as you might expect, but the riffs are catchy without resorting to RAC tropes, generally making me think of 'Panzerfaust'-era Darkthrone (the less melodic tracks on that album, at least). The drums (which don't really seem to be a drum machine) are played well enough for the purposes of this release, and while the guitar playing isn't exactly pitch-perfect, it communicates the riffs well enough. The vocals are the sort of dogmatic and screechy ranting you'd expect from a band with a boner for all things Hitler, and they're hateful and intense enough to fit the rest of the music.

The thing that holds this back, predictably enough, is its primitivity; there's just not much that goes on in this release as far as breadth of musical ideas. This could have been boiled down to the first four tracks rather easily and all the meaning would be essentially retained, and beyond that there isn't much to keep your attention. Sure, there's the occasional cool solo to enjoy and the riffs are reasonably well written, but all the songs are structured in essentially the same manner and it gets old pretty quickly. None of the songwriting is bad, per se, but the earsplitting production and distinct lack of variation forces this into a position of very occasional listening for me, which is unfortunate, because I think with a better production job this could easily become something I give regular spins in spite of its rather droning quality.

This won't change the minds of anyone dead set against NSBM on principle, nor alter any of the (admittedly often true) stereotypes about bedroom NSBM bands, but it's good enough that underground black metal fans might want to give it a try. It's certainly rather silly music, but it's a good time if you're willing to suspend your disbelief just a bit an listen to something completely, ridiculously raw and savage. This is about as far from essential as you can get, but it's still worth a look if you can find it; just don't set your expectations too high.