Herlighet - A Warrior Never Dies

When writing a review that requires a rating I always remember where my points stand. 50% is for albums that are not bad but completely fail to be good at the same time. Something that was extremely mediocre, utterly forgettable because it was not good enough to be enjoyable. Or something not bad enough to remember for how awful it was. Anything above 50% means it had some good points to it, anything below that means it had elements of something wrong, whether that be bad composition, unbearable recording quality, or musician mistakes. Since I have given this release a 54% that means I consider it to be just above that mediocre standard.

There was nothing wrong with the songs that were on this album. The sound quality was very stereotypical of black metal. The musicians were tight. There were no sloppy sections where the band could have gone out of time or moments where a particular musician couldn't keep up and made a mistake. Even the vocalist has skill with his black metal vocals and his chants as well as spoken word sections. The female vocals that came in now and then followed the synth note and didn't waver at all. All in all this christian black metal band shows a lot of promise considering everything they did right.

So why such a low rating?

It was boring. Almost the entirety of the album was tedious, uninspiring, flat and emotionless. The composition of almost every single song was just an aggressive facepunch of nothing. Distorted guitars being picked rapidly, drums hammering away and synth coming in when appropriate. There was almost no atmosphere at all. No catchy riffs that were created to draw me back to listening to the song. There were no crushingly heavy sections designed to give me the chills and there was certainly no piano melodies to give me a musical dream like atmosphere.

In fact, the pianist was one of the worst bits about this band. Aside from when he was doing some truly uninspiring synth work, he was rapidly hammering out the same notes over and over. It was as though he found a chord he liked and continued to play only those keys for the rest of the song.

The only good thing about having this album, was knowing that I won it for free through a radio give away and did not have to pay for it.

Now, as for the album art? That was actually disgraceful. All of it was like a dirt brown smear kept in condition underneath the jewel disk case. It was also uneven. Open up the entire booklet and you'll find that after each fold the colour changes, giving it the look that sections of it were left out in the sun. As though the sun faded away what minimal colour they decided to give it. And that's not the worst bit. It's pixelated to all bloody hell. It's like they asked an artist if they could use his imagery for their front cover and then they stretched it to the size of the CD cover causing it to blur. Then, after they managed that, they used Microsoft Paint to create every page afterwards. Each single letter is made of pixel blocks, and the first letter to every song is a mess of cream white. I do know that the first letter is an attempt at making it look "mediæval" but considering the pixelation, the first letter becomes completely unreadable. This mess is carried on to the back art of the CD. While ripping the CD I accidently named the first song "Ely Over the Oceans" as I couldn't tell that the letter "F" was not an "E."

Along with all of this, the song titles contained some pretty bad grammar. Examples include "I Desire Drink Your Blood," "When Will Back The Morning?" and "Crying Out Knees To The Lord."

And yet despite all this, Herlighet is considered well known amongst the underground, christian black metal scene. With examples like this and other bands such as "From Ashes" "Synnöve" and "A.W.A.S." it's no small wonder people think christian metal is a pathetic representation of the secular scene.



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