Blasphemy - Fallen Angel of Doom.... (1990) Reviews

Clan Challenge 4/25.

Let's get one thing straight about this album. If you are sitting down with a glass of wine, whiskey, or beer, hunched over your computer desk getting ready to write your magnum opus of a review, as I imagine a lot of people probably are when they do this, this album is not going to work for you. 

This album has one single minded pursuit: Brutality. It's here to kick your ass for 30minutes then peace the fuck out. If it could kill you, it would. This is an approach that translates best in a live setting. You aren't meant to analyse it, you are meant to feel it, you are meant to move. This is music for the moshpits, and once you put it in that context it's going to make a whole hell of a lot more sense.

Now obviously, Blasphemy weren't able to make it over the bridge and play this thing for me in my basement. However, I have do have two 1300watt speakers, and please believe I had to bust those bad boys out for this one, and the effect was enormous. It's an experience I will happily repeat many times over. 

I would work out to this album, I would mosh to this album, I would fight to this album. I would have a WWE Royal Rumble styled knife fight to this album. 

This is WAR METAL, SO PUT IT ON AND GO TO FUCKING WARRRRRRRRR!

I need to really thank Metal Academy for motivating me to explore more war metal.  A couple days after I get back in black metal, this thread shows up and suddenly a bunch of war metal albums are being reviewed.  And of course, there are bound to be a couple reviews for the most famous BBM album ever: Blasphemy's Fallen Angel of Doom.  In Daniel's review here, he wrote: "Blasphemy managed to combine all four of the major extreme metal sounds of the time (i.e. death metal, black metal, thrash metal & grindcore) into one swarming mass of largely indecipherable noise."  And he was right.  It was ONE noise.

I heard this album on DMS, a YouTube channel that provides full metal albums with high sound quality, and that includes really dirty sludgy albums with the proper production for the job.  This is just having come off the back of checking out various Teitanblood and Infernal Coil songs, as well as re-evaluating a few black, prog  and death albums.  Pretty much every song shares a 98% DNA similarity.  The production here is only there for the brutality, defeating its own purpose as you can barely here anything beyond the drums which are more or less doing the same thing for all 30 minutes. This production doesn't even sound as dirty or noisy as good black albums tend to be.  it's just bad.  Also having come of the back of the much lesser-known Cabinet's album Claustrophobic Dysentery, which mixes death and black with occasional doom, noise and ambient for very weird sounds, in comparison this album feels more like a bunch of jokers recording a bad demo for a major label rather than an actual studio album.  I'm not kidding.  That's EXACTLY what it sounds like.  it doesn't even get creative with the concept of non-studio works like Bee Thousand did with the concept of Beatles bootlegs. The heaviness was definitely cool at first, but they practically beat it to death, and they only show their most imagination through small bits in the LAST TWO SONGS for crying out loud.

This album will be mimicked many times throughout history, but most will likely succeed because... DAMN.  This album might be brutal, but that's the only strength to me.  Otherwise, it's more boring than Bob Dylan's Shadows in the Night and Trapt's self-titled.  Stick with Teitanblood, Cabinet and Goatpenis.  This is the single most overrated album I have ever heard.  I haven't hated a beloved album this much since that obsolete helf-star rating I gave the Ramones debut years ago (upgraded to a 9/10, bion).  Please tell me the other one will be better.

Blasphemy released the first War Metal album in 1990 by mixing Black Metal’s thin production and dissonant riffing with mid tempo sections of meaty Death Metal and deeper growls akin to the later genre. Aside from the invention of a new subgenre, it’s really nothing special. The music is fine quality with some great riffs and impressive solos, the production is quite awful with drums obscuring most of it at times, and the whole package is relatively average.

It’s unfortunate how low the guitars are in the mix. I feel that with a better production job this album could be great, but the riffing here is about as audible as bass on a Grindcore album. An enjoyable album for a pure bestial mess of aggression, but no masterpiece.

War Never Changes

Blasphemy's debut 1990 album dials up the violence and Death Metal influences to give the world one of the first tastes of what genre enthusiasts would call War Metal. The distinction is somewhat messy since the end product is so close to other more prominent genres including Black, Death, and Grind, but who am I to keep the Metal community from adding yet another subgenre to the already massive web. Fallen Angel of Doom.... is a turbulent and messy 30 minutes of horrifically produced guitar riffs with guttural Death Metal vocals, insanely fast drumming, and hardly any song composition whatsoever. Riffs, solos, growls, and overall musical ideas come and go as they please as the drums and vocals are pushed up in the mix, making the guitar and bass almost inaudible at times. Even the songs themselves are confused sometimes, with "Hording Of Evil Vengeance" and "Darkness Prevails" ending so abruptly and without reason that it's almost comical. Blasphemy were obviously going for something that was as furious and raw as possible, with their drummer working overtime on every single track and the barking but raspy vocals cutting through the mud of the other instruments. 

Straight up War Metal has never really been for me, so I can't say I'm surprised that I feel like the beginning of the genre is just riddled with problems. Straight up aggression and violent sounding Metal has never been my thing, so I'm not able to enjoy the chaos as much as others might. I can say with confidence that Fallen Angel of Doom.... is easily one of the heaviest early Black Metal releases I've heard in terms of speed and overall disorder, but I can't appreciate it when most of the interesting elements are hidden under furious but sloppy drumming and vocals that are necessarily evil but tiresome sounding. I did have a soft spot for the drummer on the first half of the album since he's going absolutely nuts on his kit, but by the final few tracks it was just overwhelmingly extra. "Goddess Of Perversity" was an obvious standout for me which incorporates all of the good and the bad of this early War Metal genre into one neat 4 minute package. 

Fallen Angel of Doom.... is an example of a very niche subgenre where the aspects that make it unique just aren't that interesting to me. The dropped power chords are hidden behind a maelstrom of pounding drums and cymbals, the songs have zero structure and interesting solos are cut off for seemingly no reason, and the raspy, barking vocals don't hold my interest for a mere 30 minutes. It's certainly an important release in the Black Metal timeline as creating something this heavy and violent back in 1990 is impressive, but it doesn't hold up for me.