This is just bad. And by 'bad' I do not mean 'bad as in good.' Oh no, I mean 'bad' as in 'horrible,' 'awful' and so on and so forth. This album would make a great piece of material evidence for those who wish to argue that the black metal underground is dead and buried. Here we have an uber-underground split CD of two bands who turn black metal into a pathetic joke.

Azaghal seem to have received some favorable reviews right here on LARM. I haven't heard any of their albums, so I can't say much about it. Maybe they came up with something better somewhere down the line. But you know, after sitting through the rubbish that I was exposed to on this release, I don't really want to find out because my guess is that this band is just overrated. What Azaghal throw out at an unfortunate listener is the lowest form of Darkthrone imitation spiced with some Swedish-type melodic parts. The sound is obviously raw and primitive, while the songs, besides having a 'punky' feel to them, are just inane, deplorable excuses for black metal. Plus, all the plagiarized Dark Tranquility-style melodic lines set against this poorly derived, primitive background make the whole thing sound even more stupid and ridiculous.

Beheaded Lamb do not fare any better, worse actually. I never heard of this Spanish band before, and I would have loved to keep it that way. I have very little to say about them. Their music is so faceless and bland that it made me feel totally empty after listening to it. They play some sort of badly recorded, thrashy black metal, if you care, and this is as deep as I am going to get with the analyses of their music. That's it, I am not wasting any more words on this because - believe me - you do not want to hear it.

Final verdict: very poor, avoid at all costs like you would an Ebola virus.

© 2002 boris