God Loves the Dead

God loves the dead starts out with a mediocre pulsing intro, followed with the usual harangue of utterly effeminate keyboards over a somewhat catchy but otherwise unimpressive, simple riff. After the vocals, a pretty cool bass line comes up as Aphazel chants "die die die," and then it returns to some lyrics I can't quite make out: "I'll rape your thoughless mind, taste the flesh of your soul -- I'll eat your foolish heart, and sterilize your tainted seed?" The two depressed notes of the keyboard continue on as we hear what I think is a "Hear fuhrer hail," followed by a crappy keyboard melody with that bass line would actually have potential if the rest of the song didn't suck.

The next song is Trolltaar 2000 -- a title that sounds like a toilet bowl cleaner. It's a remake of an old song, with the "better" production making the song worse by drowning it in blastbeats and covering the somewhat-ok viking-style black metal riffs. After five minutes or so, we're treated to a fairly done melodic guitar solo.

Powerslave -- of course, a remake of the Iron Maiden classic that introduces raspy vocals. Usually, covers by more extreme bands make the old songs faster -- this one, I believe, is slower. At least they don't butcher it with keyboards, and though the guitar work isn't good, it's a very good try. Too bad I hate cover songs, and the only reason I don't bash this into the ground is because other bands -- namely Cradle of Filth -- have done far worse butchery.

The Draining is a remix off their last crap pop-black album, and features better production. Like the last one, it's more muddled riffs, blastbeats, and raspy vocals in a fake gothic style, and isn't worth listening to. The Um Sonho Psycodelico remix also sucks, featuring the mediocre guitar playing that sounds like something from a grunge band trying to sound evil with it's really, really, really bad -- to the point of hilarity -- lyrics of doing tons of drugs and having an orgy. However, I can't tell much of a difference other than running some kind of audio filters to make it sound worse.

On to the two videos: the only reason anyone would want this album -- they are hilariously bad.

In God Loves the Dead, they managed to drag their equipment out to some fjord in Norway, which is nowhere near as impressive as the Immortal videos where they played SHIRTLESS in the freezing snow and on a frigid mountain. The band is introduced on a cheap yellow gradient, and the first thiing you will notice is that Aphazel definitely wins the best costume award -- a spiked headband, unwashed black hair, a white goatee, corpse paint, an ornate shirt, and gauntlets with long curved blades. He looks positively evil, like something out of Conan. The video is color-filtered shots of the band mixed with graveyard photos -- for some reason, they were too pussy to set up there and play illegally like they did in one of their other videos. Deadly Kristin looks rather sexy with all that blood, but is oddly tan -- though it may or may not be a natural Italian one.

Um Sonho Psychodelico is set in a dark room somewhere, using color filters of red and blue along with some psychedelic double-vision and trailing effects. The flaming drumsticks are sort of cool, and Aphazel looks evil like he did in the last one -- and is wearing a pontificial cross of Lucifer on his shirt, most recognizable as the King Diamond symbol. Lord Kaiaphas shows himself off for most of the video with his Mansonite-looking corpse paint, full leather body suit, huge spiked collar, and ultra-cheesy vampire fangs. Also included are some pictures of what looks like skull and dragon ashtrays bought at Spencers, and some ambigious, possibly topless figure -- Erichte? -- in a cloak.

Write no more reviews -- I have said enough. It gets 30% for the effort, occassionally good riffs and bass lines, and especially the two hilariously bad videos.