Forum.RttP{Book of Sand - atmospheric black metal from Minnesota}

ugh. haven't heard them but, this:

Nothing last forever, even cold November rain - 0%

'Salmost inevitable that you will eventually get heavily burned in a relationship; where years of carefully built up trust and reliance come crashing down. You take some bad crystal meth and beat her dog to death with a rusty spanner when high. She has a threesome with your parents, etc. We've all been there, right.

Well, here I'm the one left feeling stunned and betrayed; Paradigm Recordings' act of callous, unthinking betrayal is, for those lacking a few brain cells, this album; Book of Sand's appallingly awful "Destruction, not Reformation". To be honest there'd been a few signs that things were eventually going to head downhill - Head Sensory Bypass and the Jarboe releases were truly spectacular wastes of money- but from the label that has turned me onto such brilliance as The Angelic Process, Hjarniaudi, Heart in Mouth, Plants, Snowdrift, Procyon-X, Ondo, Mourner and so on, well, I didn't expect this. I didn't know they were capable of it! It's hard not to weep a bit right now.

This is essentially really bad bedroom black metal with a violin. That's all it is, that's all it entails. Drums are reduced to an inaudible background patter (originally, I figured maybe my headphones just weren't plugged in probably, but nope, it really is mixed that badly), the fuzzy, shifting guitars provide that formless, shapeless mid-heavy cloud that the worst bedroom bands do (think a really bad Paysage D'Hiver, but minus all the intensity and purpose), and somewhere over the top a violin plays a bunch of really shitty lines. No good melodies or anything, just lots of that whole generic "mournful violin" stuff that we've all heard- that everyone in the world has heard- over and over again. Vocals from what I can tell are whisper screams, just for the final insult.

No punchline, no bizarre left turn to decent music later on, nothing! If Smell the Stench released this you'd nod and have a laugh, but here it is- this steaming pile of feces on a label that at one point was not only respectable, but my favourite! So bummed. Oh well. Tit for tat; I'm downloading everything these guys do now. Yeah, it's shit, don't buy it etc etc.