I think that, in my lifetime so far, I've heard “Party Rock Anthem” way more than the zero times I intended to. When LMFAO comes on, I want to insert a Q-Tip deep enough into another person's ear to telekinetically perforate my own tympanic membranes. Still, my stupidity and hate for their music aren't enough for me to denounce them as terrible musicians. They are not. When music follows predictable patterns, it sends positive stimuli to the brain. So simplistic, dumb music is easier to enjoy on a biological level, which is in turn an easier alternative to thinking about it. It's hard to distinguish the fun in standing motionless whilst rubbing your chin, and LMFAO are aware of that. They know what they're doing and they do it effectively.
This seemingly unrelated prologue is actually pretty fitting in the context of this review, because Anaal Nathrakh are pretty much the LMFAO of metal, as far as this album is concerned. It's a shame, really. I was feeling like talking about stuff like creative arrangements, songwriting, structure and whatnot, but none of those are worth mentioning here. This is a party metal album and every one of its components equates to that. Well, obviously the party itself would have to be kind of ridiculous and unusual for the analogy to make sense, but that's just a detail. Anyway, the sound on HIEaAtDAH is huge and filthy, in the sense that you can feel the mucus leaking out of the speakers when you play it. The music is as loud as the hype around this album and as simplistic as dignity would allow it to be. I almost forgot, in case you didn't know or didn't deduce by the liberal use of “A”s and “H”s in their name, Anaal Nathrakh is a black metal band. But, in accordance to the party paradigm, their music has been streamlined in order to follow the biological feedback principle mentioned earlier. This, in turn, means that their method of composition and riffing is slicker, neater, with a lot of grind influences for added energy.
I must also point out their inherent fixation for appropriately neat song structures. You have here hooks and yell-gibberish-along choruses by the dozen per track. The songs are so easy to follow that you'd need to be holding 58 conversations simultaneously to even show signs of zoning out. That is a good thing if you want to flex your social life to a soundtrack, but not so good if you want to listen to music. If you want to listen to Hell Is Empty... seriously, prepare to be distracted by how fascinating the floor is. In fact, the only thing that appears to differentiate the music here from the textbook definition of “generic” is the relentless playing around in the vocal department. It sounds like V.I.T.R.I.O.L. wouldn't come to the recording sessions, so they'd hide a microphone in his bathroom whenever he took a bath. Only occasionally are there indicators that the two band members even know each other. Most of the time you have a tube with vocal cords doing whatever tickles its fancy pasted on top of an average extreme pop metal act being mechanical and boring and shit.
You've probably deduced by now that I don't buy into all the murmur surrounding this album that compares it to some of the most evil sounding music ever created. Well, that's not exactly true either. Think of an ADD-ridden Rammstein, where the lineup is just the keyboardist cloned six times. That's how evil the album is for the most part. But, just like any party should, things become more interesting toward the second half. What we have here is the most awesome and most disappointingly short party to have ever existed. During “Solifugae”, all the people are entering the party. The second track serves as a way to warm the crowd up. There are songs down the middle that merely serve the two purposes of being fist pumpers and of including as many metal clichés as humanly possible. Tracks 7 to 9 see the party showing more and more hints of being kind of strange. “Sanction Extremis” is the party becoming too weird to handle and people starting to try to leave through the now bolted shut doors. And finally “Castigation and Betrayal”, as the name implies, would be someone having called the police in the previous song and the mentioned authoritative entity performing a pooping manoeuvre on the festivities. As such, Hell Is Empty... is that kind of album that will not contribute in any way to humanity. Don't listen to it because you think it will be captivating or enlightening. It isn't. But if you want a dose of mindless fun, be my guest.
Standout tracks:
The Final Absolution
Lama Sabachthani
Sanction Extremis (Kill Them All)
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