You have to admire the dedication of USBM bands to that raw, primal Black Metal sound in the face of easy and slick sounding home recording techniques. What you have to admire even more is those one man bands that make their music as un-commercial as possible and still have a MySpace page to plug their merchandise on. It’s Social Networking in the name of Satan! And in Unhuman Disease’s case, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Nocturnus Dominus, he really wants to emphasise the Satan part.
Take the rawness of early Burzum, the riffs of Immortal, and vocals reminiscent of Satyr Wongraven and you pretty much have your formula here. It isn’t especially ground breaking (Satan forbid!), but it is done rather well. The opening to ‘Entering Satan’s Kingdom’ with the funeral bell tolling is eerie and chilling, and the following cacophony is a measured kind of savagery. ‘Demonic Unholy Night’ on the other hand is a totally different beast with a strong and infectious lead riff that makes for quite a memorable song. I don‘t know whether it is the mix on the track but the drums on ‘Guided by Satan’ sound very out of place which really distracts you from what is otherwise a very catchy track. The title track kicks it up a notch though with some dark ambience a la Burzum added to the mix to give the whole song another dimension that a few of the other tracks could definitely benefit from. The final song on the album is actually quite fantastic - the mid-tempo beat and distant screaming vocals creates a very powerful surge of dark feeling in the song for a fitting close to the album.
This album, unfortunately is a victim of its own ideology. Whether you’re into the Satanic or not, there is a lot of potential in these songs, but in some cases bad production and the DIY method of playing all the instruments limits just what can be done. Some cleaner production and, if not session then at least guest musicians, would give a major injection of class into this formula that at times is compelling, but at others is rather generic.
http://www.myspace.com/unhumandisease
