Glorior Belli - Manifesting the Raging Beast
March 23 2008 at 09:19:48 AM
For the last couple of years, Greg Anderson's Southern Lord has made a concerted, if not amusing effort to assemble a "formidable" stable of Black Metal acts—Orcustus, Tangorodrim and Urgehal among them. The predictable addition of France's Glorior Belli caught few by surprise, as greater bands—Watain and Deathspell Omega—eluded Southern Lord's monopoly of mediocrity. Without coincidence, Glorior Belli assumed shameless Watain aping on its first full-length,
O' Laudate Dominus.
Admittedly technically dazzling, but woefully short on individual take and offering, the record moved some to laughter and jeers, others to wonderment over what would unfold in its wake. Glorior Belli has therefore taken the next logical step, unabashedly donning Deathspell Omega's persona with an eight cut recording that differs little from the DsO's
Si Monumentum Requires Circumspice.
Apology's din is deafening: supporters decry the stubborn fact that Watain and Deathspell Omega make little effort to hide their influences; Anderson himself felt the need to heroically shout out from on high via Internet message-board in order to dispel a single criticism of the latest record, launching into a directionless argument about the death of originality and the "offensive" production of Watain's latest,
Sworn to the Dark—all hilarious statements considering Southern Lord's support for
Sworn to the Dark, and better yet, the hard-and-fast derivative artificiality of Anderson's own band, Sunn O))). The only relevant argument, of course, is why settle for imitation when one can have the genuine artifact? And that's not entirely rhetorical….
[Stewart Voegtlin]
.jpg "Jailbait (NSFW)")
_001[1].jpg "Ratt - Infestation")
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