In all my years of listening to metal, I've never heard anything as strange and bizarre as Ornaments of Agony's full-length debut. These guys make !T.O.O.H.! look like normal people. Hell, even Mahmoud Awad can't hope to be as strange as these guys.
So what is Ornaments of Agony truly about? Well, according to their Metal Archives page, they hail from Mongolia and they play funeral doom/death. They are funeral doom/death in that they play extremely slowly, they tune and distort their guitars to death metal specifications, and they utilize deep growls. However, they do this with all the ineptness and incompetence of a communist government. The drum machine goes off-beat constantly and its toms sound incredibly cheap, the vocalist sounds like he hasn't had any water in days, and the guitars make a lot of mistakes, especially when he tries to perform a solo.
Strange thing is, instead of being completely laughable, the music this band makes is utterly disturbing. The mistakes they make create end up creating a slowly churning maelstrom of malice that uses its energies to open a void full of Lovecraftian horrors, growling, howling. The guy behind the band maybe too stupid to know it, but he has within him the power to destroy the universe and rend existence asunder. This album is a preview of the destruction he will unleash should he unlock his powers.
I have no idea how to encompass the strangeness of Ornaments of Agony. Xyzzy? No. Shkabooloogba? No. Wuuuuuuuuuub? Eh, close enough. Anyway, this album is giving me the creeps, and I need to get rid of it as soon as possible.
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