December Wolves - Blasterpiece Theatre
Earache Records
Brutal black/grindcore crossover
11 songs (41'09")
Release year: 2002
Earache Records
Reviewed by Alex
Crap of the month

Blasterpiece Theatre by December Wolves is an extreme and brutal album. I like extreme and brutal metal music … if it is done well. Unfortunately, Blasterpiece Theatre does not belong to the category of done well; it belongs more in the category of quickly and randomly assembled cacophony. Very surprising, since the band worked on this album for a while, and their previous effort that I know of was in the genre of black metal with the touch of folk atmosphere.

OK, back to Blasterpiece Theatre. Music first, album concept second. If I were to characterize their style on this album, I’d say it is a crossover between black metal and grindcore. Here is proof. Guitar music is a heap of riffs that have no beginning and no end. Now, this is supposed to represent chaos, the characteristic feature of black metal. Instead, it feels like noise in my ears. Drums are programmed with one type of tempo – you guessed it from the album title – blasting, and this is where grindcore part comes in. No acceleration or slowing down in rhythmic texture does not eliminate the feel of the above mentioned noise. With such musical backdrop vocals don’t even matter, but they are typical black metal, except the spots where the band uses samples. More on those later. I honestly struggled to get through the whole album. To be fair, I listened to it again, and the few redeeming qualities came on more traditional black piece Kolobos and in the form of thrash elements on Sharing Needles. Otherwise, still same low grade. It must be a telling sign when the best song on your CD is a bonus track which is a re-recorded old piece To Kill ... Again

The CD directed me to their website and this is where the whole picture unfolded. What they were trying to create is the atmosphere of the horror movie (hung from the ceiling doll on the backcover reinforces the feeling). The whole thing is horror, all right. The atmosphere was supposed to come in the form of those samples which appear in the most inopportune places.

Then, there is the whole philosophy of the band which I also tried to grasp from the recent interview in Metal Maniacs. I hate when the band says “we are the pioneers, and we are breaking borders”. Translation – if you don’t get our stuff, then you are a dumb son of a bitch. I’d say:”Guys, if you put out shit, this ain’t my fault it is unlistenable”.

Killing Songs :
I couldn't find any
Alex quoted 25 / 100
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