This is going to be one of those reviews that I just want to write and get out of the way. I take no pride in having to be so harsh, but I feel like I need to be brutally honest in order to avoid allowing others to experience this monstrosity. I really had to force myself to finish listening to this album. It was quite painful, and an absolute waste of my time. The only reason I ended up on the last track, was for the sake of this review.

YSENGRIN, which is apparently a wolf like character from the web comic "Gunnerkrigg Court". I'm not sure if the band was intentionally named after the character, but I felt compelled to see where this band got their name from or what it meant. This is a band that considers themselves to be that of "hermetic dark metal". It has some early stages of black metal and doom metal in the mix as well, but the sound is so poorly delivered. Upon my research, they seem to have several other releases. None of which I am interested in if it is as horrific as this album is.

I often find other bands to compare new bands that I have discovered to compare to, but with this band and most importantly, this album, I cannot find anything terrible enough to compare it too. It was one of the worst albums I've ever listened to. The production was ungodly stale and weak, the vocals were some of the worst, if not the worst I have ever heard, catchy and interesting riffs were far and in between, the drums sounded like they were pulled out from a dusty attic thirty years later to record the album with a missing tuning key, and the bass was often overbearing and muddy sounding. When I began this album, I thought something was wrong with my speakers. I had to play another song to make sure that the brand new lap top I just bought wasn't defective. In fact, I almost had to write to my manager and ask if the copy he sent me was the right link. The production of the album sounds as if they sat one of their smart phones down, clicked record, and all started playing.

Track two ("Sans Appui Et Avec Appui") of the album starts off with a drum beat that sounds completely unmixed and with barely audible clean guitars. What I will give credit for in this song, is that there are some decent riffs every now and then. "As Flittermice as Satans Spys", which is the fourth song on the album tries to be evil. This song has vocals that may potentially cause ear cancer. It will either make you break out laughing, or you'll just decide that enough is enough and shut the album right off. The song is also very repetitive and slow. By track six, "Abstinence" I had messaged my friend and colleague to shed some of this pain onto him. He agreed with me, and proceeded to show his friend and brother who are heavy metal fans as well, and broke out into laughter. By then the album had only gotten worse, which I was almost impressed with because I didn't think it could top the previous five tracks. This song sounds like a bunch of twelve-year-old goth kids wrote in their Mom's cigarette smoke filled basement. The guitar tone has you asking "Why the fuck would you want your guitar to sound like that?". The production even sounds worse!

"Momentarium" is the seventh song on the album that for some reason offers slightly better effort. It doesn't even sound like the same album. Don't get me wrong, it's still close to unbearable and sloppy sounding as well. But comparatively speaking, it isn't as bad as the others and has a faster tempo. The other thing I don't understand is the quality in sound improves a little. There are tracks in between full length songs that are strictly instrumental, using super cheesy keyboards. Song number nine, "L'Etrange Mason Haute Dans La Drume" take you, the listener, back to a shitty and weak production sound and vocal effort. The bass is overbearing on this track and the song almost sounds punk rock-ish. "Anteros" (bear with me here...) is the eleventh song. Is there wasn't a song on this album that made you start laughing like a mad man, or woman, this one will do it with its hilarious clean/talking vocals. As it comes to no surprise, this song is another cheese fest with excessive chugging of the guitar. This is another one that tries to be super evil. I thought the black demon ghosts from the movie "Ghost" were going to start emerging from my floor.

The final song I am going to review, but not the final song on the album, unfortunately, is track twelve "Mysteres de L'Artifex". If I am going to tell you anything in life, don't let yourself get this far on the album. This song is seventeen minutes long. It's hard for any band to write a song like that and keep the listener interested. While the song is a tad more enjoyable for at least what seems like the first thousand minutes, it descends past the six-minute mark, and this is where I just started fast forwarding through the rest of it. PLEASE MAKE IT END!All in all, this may be the most unenjoyable, and worst album and band I've ever listened to. Terrible production, terrible vocals, terrible guitars, terrible drums. All around a disaster of an effort. As a musician myself, I would never embarrass myself by releasing something so bad that its comical. These guys cannot write music. But the one thing I will give them credit for is originality and memorability, because I have never in my life heard anything like this, haha. It's like when you remember a bad life event or a nightmare. As much of a brash asshole as this makes me sound, I would not recommend this album to anyone. This isn't just a matter of it not being my favorite genre. Please spare yourself.
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