Style: Atmospheric Black Metal, Heavy Metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Skeletonwitch, Bathory, Iron Maiden
Review by: Cooper
Country: US-CA
Release date: 2 September, 2022
As I peruse the never-ending buffet that is the new arrivals page of Bandcamp, I am bound to discover more albums than I could ever reasonably listen to. Like a king at a feast, I grab at anything that looks appetizing, stacking albums upon my plate, each more precarious than the last, but when I do finally sit down to enjoy my bounty, a grim realization dawns upon me. I cannot possibly consume all this music, let alone enjoy myself while I do so. I must decide, based purely on looks and perhaps a nibble, what I shall partake in. I am forced to choose which albums I will listen to based purely on their artwork and featured songs. Through this process I discovered GUDSFORLADT’s Friendship, Love and War, the product of a lone man from Los Angeles.
The artwork jumped out at me almost voraciously, the duality between the image’s knightly subject, cloaked in black, and the flower-blanketed coastline resonating deeply and profoundly within me. Was it cheesy? Undoubtedly so, but I still felt a pull to listen that album artwork rarely, if ever, has on me. Considering the artwork’s harmonious nature with the album title’s clear juxtaposition, my hopes were high for a well realized and varied listening experience. Unfortunately, I have rarely been let down more than I was by Friendship, Love and War.
To its credit, Friendship, Love and War does one thing incredibly well. It fully realizes the dichotomy between darkness and light that was hinted at via its artwork and title. By taking the traditional black metal stylings of wailing screams and constantly blasting drums and infusing them with a heavy metal playfulness in the form of dueling guitar melodies and Iron Maiden-like riffage, GUDSFORLADT, Danish for “god forsaken”, forges a sound that is genuinely worthy of its artwork. Within minutes of beginning the album’s opener “Ride Forever In the Shadow of the Mountain”, the dichotomy between darkness and light is fully realized, and then realized again on tracks two and three, and then realized again on tracks three through ten. By the time you are first hearing the album’s closer and title track, you have actually already heard the same song eight times (adjusted for the instrumental interludes). And therein lies my problem with Friendship, Love and War: If you’ve heard one song, you’ve heard them all. With repeated listens, this issue only grows more apparent. I personally began to adopt what I have dubbed “GUDSFORLADT-induced clairvoyance” where upon listening to one song I know exactly how the next will sound.
Of course, I am speaking in hyperbole. I wasn’t truly able to predict everything, such as the frantic multi-layered guitar chaos that begins “Lands Eternal Taken” and the gallop style break in “Head Bowed in Silent Prayer” which neatly linked that song’s subject matter of riding a horse to the actual sound of the music, albeit maybe simplistically, in a way that few bands achieve or even conceive. These were my favorite moments in the album, but in my memory they have been trampled by the crowd of all too similar moments of soaring guitar atop buzzing black metal.
As I listen, I can’t help but feel like DM, the man behind GUDSFORLADT, would be better suited as the member of a band instead of helming a solo-project. He clearly has a knack for creating powerful moments within black metal, but without a group of fellow musicians to further develop his ideas, they tend to become overbearing and monotonous. Furthermore, elements of the music that were lacking, such as the drums, could be delegated and more time could be spent refining the material. DM says it best in the album’s Bandcamp description: “For better or worse, whether he wishes it or not, no man on this earth rides alone. We are all of us bound together, heart to heart and soul to soul.” So why ride alone in the creation of music?
Despite the harshness of my words, I still do recommend you listen to at least one song from this album. Like I said, Friendship, Love and War does one thing incredibly well, and it should be heard – just not in such large quantities. I personally recommend “The Criminal and His Willing Sacrifice in Repentance,” though really any of the non-instrumental tracks would serve this purpose.
Recommended tracks: The Criminal and His Willing Sacrifice in Repentance
You may also like: SALQIU, Lamp of Murmuur
Final verdict: 5/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: Independent
GUDSFORLADT is:
– DM (everything)
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