Spetalsk - Perverted Commandment

Quite boring, Spetalsk's Perverted Commandment mini-album is more prone to repetition than a stuttering politician, more boring (and less interesting) than watching Kentucky bluegrass try to play the banjo and more shallow than both. Now, I'm not saying that politicians are deep or that your front lawn is a fountain of intellectual stimulation but I am saying something about Spetalsk. Ultimately, though the songs are well played and I'm scared of Endymion because he looks like he will materialize in the dark recesses of my closet and come crashing through the door covered in all my old t-shirts and skewer me with his drumsticks, I can't say that Spetalsk have really done anything requiring any form of effort when it comes to the music they've stitched together out of a few too few riffs to jerry-rig Perverted Commandment's barely there style - a word I use loosely. The four songs which 'Commandment is composed of can be rearranged into a myriad of combinations and never sound like anything was changed.

Instead of writing a gimmicky review, which I originally though of doing, and writing four of the exact same paragraphs and changing only the song they were referring to, I've decided to actually try and pull some simple characteristics out of the music. Aside from looking like the Undertaker but slightly better groomed, Endymion really likes his ride cymbal - he uses it to a great degree to add variance to his drumming. When I first heard it, I thought, "Hey! That was neat..." but then, he did it in the other songs as well, using it in the same places structurally for the same reasons and, in a bizarre irony, even choking on the same note in opening track "Your Soul I Will Torture For All Eternity... By Playing The Same Songs Over And Over"* and the title track, "Perverted Commandment." Poor guy... looks like he is going to have to go work out a bit more with gym partner vocalist R. Karlsson who has the perfect uninspired vocals for Spetalsk's uninspired black metal... eeehhhh, I wouldn't call it a black metal attack really... more like a lack metal attack.

Zetterberg, the band's romance novel cover guy (and not a strange form of German cheese like I originally thought) with the hair made from the scalpings of ten thousand angels is a competent guitar player technically speaking but I get the feeling that he couldn't write an interesting rhythm if his shiny golden locks were being threatened with buckets of engine sludge. I'll get you Penzoil! He usually sticks to the typical staccato, flurry of 8th notes in all sorts of configurations with total disregard for rhythm and total lack of melodic sensibility. Not one time in any of the songs does anything he does interest me. Ironically, the guitar solos on the album, which do occasionally make me consider lifting my head from whatever magazine I'm reading (in this case, Gallery of the Grotesque circa 2006 - look for a review of this sweeeet zine in the upcoming weeks) but Chedderberg doesn't even play the leads! Some guy named Petter Nilson had the audacity to make segments of Perverted Commandment barely worth listening to.

I don't know why but the whole "black metal mixed with no rhythmic variation and monotonous pounding drums played by the unjolly green giant - genre" is waning for me. After three spins of this disc, I'm inclined to listen to Camel or Return To Forever just to escape the "We're tough because our music sucks" compensation thing. I should probably stop before Endymion and R. Karlsson climb up Rupunzel's hair - mainly for exercise really - into my room and force me to listen to the same riffs again. Perverted Commandment is kind of similar to that guy who cuts his lawn every day at the same time.

*The first track is actually called this. I swear...