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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

SOUND & FURY: LIFT THE CURSE (2007) by Freya

Freya: yet another death metal allusion to the Aesir.

There’s really not much to say about this one since it’s a fairly standard entry in the glutted death metal genre, but it’s worth a listen for those in the know as it features “Lilith,” a song that sounds like an outtake from the Sword’s excellent AGE OF WINTERS (2006), and the album’s title track that’s nothing more than a bald-faced ripoff of Gwar’s 1990 classic “Salaminizer.” I defy you to play “Lift The Curse” and not be able to sing the Gwar lyrics in almost exact sync to the music since the two songs sound almost exactly the same. Having a musical influence is one thing, and this may not be a case of conscious plagiarism, but come on, fer fucksake…

And the icing on this questionable cake is what must surely be the worst cover of Black Sabbath’s seminal “War Pigs” ever recorded, Exhibit A in the case against the inappropriate use of Cookie Monster vocals (Cannibal Corpse's cover of Sabath's "Zero the Hero" coming a close second). It’s so beyond the pale that the listener almost has no choice but to picture the beloved blue Muppet in a pair of leather bell-bottoms, croaking into a microphone while flanked by Tommy Iommi and Geezer Butler, and I don’t know about you, but I find that image hilarious. That said, it’s so bad that it transcends its own awfulness to become an object of fascination for the old school metal junkie, unbelievably becoming a must-have for collectors of novelty metal.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why does a band named after a Nordic Pagan Goddess feature a scene from the Bible on its album cover and a tribute to a Jewish demonness on the album itself?

Oh, yeah - THAT'S right! It's all "Boo Scaries" for the parents they try so hard to rebel against! What better reason could a self-respecting death metal band want?

Damn me for using logic, anyway!

(PS: Agree with you on Age of Winters. For my money, that was the best Sabbath album that Sabbath never recorded - and better than most of the ones they did!)

Anonymous said...

never heard of them but there is a LOT of generic and sub-standard death metal around. It gets much worse when you start probing some of the newer forms of metal sub genres. I don't even know how to label it or what it is. Bad metal is a plague.