This was a review that I thought long and hard about writing after I pulled the CD out of its packaging. It instantly made itself very clear what it was all about with a big sunwheel adorning the cover, lyrics about ‘aryan (sic) blood’ and a cover of an Absurd song. Yep readers what we have here is pure unadulterated NSBM or if you are not aware of the acronym, National Socialist Black Metal. I am very grateful that we do not get many examples of this despicable genre and I can assure you that all behind this website are very much against said perpetrators ideologies. However in all my years as a music writer I have only ever put the ban hammer on one CD (and it was by the same label) as I found the lyrical content revolting and propagating racial hatred; something the person behind this CD probably only fails at due to lack of any intelligence. Should we cover such contentious and inflammatory material? Well although I can understand printed publications refusing, as they are limited by space and why should more deserving artists suffer missing a review for acts such as this, we do not have the same strictures and do believe in free speech if it does not transgress criminal lines. However I make this quite clear we do not welcome you and your artists here so be well warned if anyone else decides to send us such material.
The one thing I will say in favour of Greek one man band Faethon is that at least he does not try and hide where he is coming from, so many do and for this reason well intentioned groups such as AntiFa get things so wrong and victimise bands that have no NSBM tendencies, at least here they can do so without any misunderstanding. However it is unlikely as an interview states that this fragile artist does not like playing live and does not, knowing that doing so would result in him probably being strung up. Faethon and his label go as far as to proudly declare themselves members of the Heathen Circle a community of similar artists and organisations with allegiances to ideologies that go further than mere heathenism itself and ones that are easy to determine when reading behind the lines.
Once I had got past laughing myself silly over this mini Fuhrer’s photo on Metal Archives and done some detailed research it was time to get to the music and it was here that if possible things went from bad to worse. It is perhaps a bad generalisation but I do not think that any NSBM I have ever heard has been any good, Graveland, Nokturnal Mortum and the lesser known of their ilk have all struck as pretty woeful and even by their standards Faethon scrapes the bottom of the barrel. We start with an ambient number ‘The Silent Whispers Of The Pagan Countryside’ which does as acknowledged to a large extent, as it has twittering birdsong over weedy synth lines and not a lot else. Sure the likes of Drudkh, Peordh and many other pagan artists have used similar to affect an atmosphere but this goes on for a mind numbing 9 minutes and gets sillier as owls and other more nocturnal animals join in the chorus. The listener should wake up as ‘Awakening Of The Blood’ comes in with a more feral backbone to it but then again they are left trying to hear exactly what is going on from the woefully inadequate bedroom black metal sound mix. There is a heavy fuzz about things that sounds like it has escaped from an old decaying cassette found in the back of the drawer, all the sound levels are wrong with things distorted in the mix and frankly sounding ghastly. Exhaustively looking for something positive to say about this, a bit was played to a professional sound engineer who could only say “I was intrigued to hear the music....outstanding use of disco drums and how do you program a drum machine to play out of time like that?” ‘The Forest Is Alive’ goes for a wishy-washy mid-paced flow with the keys and cheesy backing chorals washing it all with a folk-laden flow that is clumsy in execution and like a true fascist overstaying its welcome and not knowing quite when to die. The keyboards on ‘Till The Next Avatar’ are particularly brilliant, well they are if you can imagine demo material Cradle Of Filth and Hecate Enthroned whilst the players were still in infant school, they are certainly amusing for all the wrong reasons as are the slap dash drums and cement mixer sounding noise coming out of this, it’s honestly the sound of nursery school children hitting things in the sandpit.
Moving onto the covers we have Absurd ‘The Gates Of Heaven’ with true and proud sounding clean vocals completely obliterated by bass and guitar fizzing and fuzzing as they distort all around them in the mix. We also get one by another notorious NS band Thor’s Hammer who were led by Graveland’s Capricornus. He finished the group stating that he felt there was nothing else to be done with them and there was no point continuing it, shame the same cannot be said here. Finally we end with a silly twee medieval romp ‘Visions Of The Glorious Past,’ what exactly these entail for Herr Apollo the man behind this catastrophe is not exactly explained, I am sure he would love to go back in time and sniff the fragrant air around the Nazi death camps in the early morning whilst listening to the wildlife and dreaming of his white power world. Perhaps he should be sent back in time for some good old Spartan discipline and see how long he survives in the all too real world. Despicable in every sense of the word.
http://www.myspace.com/faethonhellas
