Band's List Black Death Vorkreist Sigil Whore Christ

Ahh yes, I remember the times when black metal meant something, the times when black metal had the reputation of being; violent, powerful, emotional and atmospheric. However, there always has to be that one band who is just a little too serious about creating black metal for the sake of creating black metal, or in other words, too “kvlt” about black metal. I think that if bands such as Hell Hammer were still around to see this, they’d laugh their asses off (In fact, I’m laughing my ass off just thing about it!). Unfortunately, I must say that Vorkreist is one of those bands, who just try too hard to be black metal. That being said, this album is still black metal, and black metal fans should enjoy this.

I have to admit, when I first played this song, I started head-banging. The really thick guitars with slow drumming created a really energetic warlike atmosphere. I was totally getting pumped. This is usually a little trick that bands like to do to build tension before they get into the guts of the track and Vorkreist have done an ok job at this. But, after the first verse ended, it got boring. The intro, got me to the edge of my seat, but where I was suppose to fall off was replaced by an extremely boring passage. Sure, the tempo is quick, and the vocals are extremely raspy but that’s all there is to it. It lacks any depth and character to it which is a definite draw back. There is one thing that keeps me listening to an album and that’s; character, atmosphere (good atmosphere I might add), brutality and interesting passages. Sigil Whore Christ, had none of that. Sure, there were attempts at adding a little bit of variety by changing the tempo here and there, but the execution of the album itself was just plain and generic.

Is it just me, or are there more and more bands out there today who are trying to be the new Marduk, or Tsjuder? Well, I don’t mind it when band tries to copy the bands who influence them, but when they pretty much make a clone of a pioneering band, is not called gaining influence, that’s called plagiarism! All the riffs, all the vocals and all of the passages, I’ve heard before. This tells me two things, either black metal is running out ideas to create music (the unlikely option) or Vorkreist lacks song writing skills so they must take from others. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that Vorkreist is the only band who does this because almost every band out there today copies from other bands, just not to the same superficial extent. The worst part of this is that they have adopted a similar sound of black metal of new Marduk (2009-present) and we all know that’s a lot bad Marduk. You can probably already imagine what Vorkreist is like already; 80 year old black metal shrieks, super fast incoherent drumming, heavily black metalish distorted riffs and very little variety in song structure and depth to their music. That pretty much sums Vorkreist up in a nutshell.

To be fair, Vorkreist isn’t all bad because after all, this is pure black metal and I can imagine any super hardcore black metal fan to get into Sigil Whore Christ. There are moments where I felt that the atmosphere gained my attention at times but even they didn’t last. To be honest, I was already falling asleep to Sigil Whore Christ by the end of the first track. There was just nothing that grabbed by attention, nothing that seduced me, nothing that made me say “hey, give me more!”. Sigil Whore Christ is just overly generic black metal, and that’s pretty much all there is too it, so there really isn’t much to say about Sigil Whore Christ. I give Vorkreist’s Sigil Whore Christ an 11/20.