German antifascist communists booted American metalcore band Woe from the lineups of some shows on their current tour due to Woe opening for Inquisition a few times. Woe are one of your standard, screamo random post-hardcore bands pretending to be “US Black Metal” when in reality they are still metalcore. Moreover, Woe being social justice warriors from Brooklyn, New York played several benefit shows for antifa in the US. Now Woe themselves are throwing a fit about leftist crybabies preventing them from playing shows on Facebook as the communist scum decided that since Woe do not march in gay pride parades, probably do not fuck the gaping open wounds of mutilated transvestites, and do not mind opening for bands that once sort of played a simplified form of black metal that Woe occasionally play on Spotify when wanting something heavier to relieve the stress of their service jobs, Woe must be shot with hollow point bullets in the back of the head.
Your average person perceives music as good and bad, with a whole lot of bad and some good. The truth is more shocking: truly bad is rare like truly good, but the vast majority is just so-so.
So-so occurs not because an album has too much bad, but because it doesn’t have enough good. And this isn’t a by-the-pound determination. It needs to be good in a number of ways, including structurally and conceptually, or it devolves into chaos. Randomness. Disorder.
The average album usually has no defects. The instrumentation is good, the production is good, and individual members put in strong performances. They can write songs according to the book, and often have a unique concept. It just doesn’t hold together because it lacks a central idea.
Withdrawal is an example of a truly bad album. It is not bad because it is incompetent, but because it is whore. Woe takes the techniques of orthodox black metal and applies them to hard rock with touches of indie. This produces disorder with a face value different from its content.
On the surface, this album emulates Gorgoroth and Darkthrone’s Transilvanian Hunger; a little bit under the surface, you find Ulver and Taake. Dig down deep enough and you find recycled Def Leppard and Quiet Riot riffs, with repetitive use of black metalTM technique like blast beats, melodic drone, bad production, and so forth.
As a product, Withdrawal is great because it’s open to everyone. On the surface, it’s rebellion; underneath, it’s the same complacent crap your parents were listening to. Maybe it’s a good pop album; I got bored halfway through. But it’s not black metal.
