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Deiseal > Relationship of Hate > Reviews
Deiseal - Relationship of Hate

A debut that is worse than the demo? Yup! - 52%

natrix, February 8th, 2008

I really enjoyed Deiseal's demo CD, which was recorded out in the sticks of France, and it is with a heavy heart that I missed a show of theirs on Halloween 1999, shortly after that demo was released. I felt these guys had something really good going for them, with their eerie riffs, and macabre lyrics. But Relationship of Hate certainly makes me wonder if this is the same band.

Most of this I blame on the production. So called master producer, Alexis Philippot of Misanthrope produced this in a high tech studio, but he really fucking raped Deiseal's sound. Big time. Everything is so thin, that it's hard to turn the stereo up loud enough to bang your head. The guitars, drums, bass, and vocals...they're all just "there," neatly compressed and vacuum sealed for mass consumption. Nothing grabs you.

As I understand, the band were trying to bridge black and death metal with this album, by bringing in faster tempos. This is fine, but it reveals two problems: the drums and the riffs themselves.

First of all, when you've got drums that sound like "tick-tick-tick" played on a kid's drumset, you don't think metal. It's surprising that Alexis Philipot, a drummer himself, would allow such a weak drum sound to prevail on an album. It really brings out the boring factors in this recording and drains all energy from the album.

Now, the riffs. As I've said, Deiseal's demo CD had creepy, strange riffs, certainly inspired by early Satyricon and Mayhem. On here, it's as if they took all the dullest riffs from De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and made an entire album out of them. None of these blasting riffs have a real character, even though none of them suck outright. As I've said, they exist.

There are a few moments when a twisted riff will show up in a midpaced section, then Deiseal speeds up. Sometimes you get a rather nice clean section, and then it's gone. As you can see, it's quite frustrating to listen to this, and the more I talk about it, the more angry I get, so I'm going to go throw on their demo and forget this snore fest.