For Those About Squawk: Waldo Pecks on Defacing God and Paradise Lost

What’s up? It’s your old boy Waldo here, to inform you about some new and upcoming releases, good, bad, or in between. Remember, I’m not an elitist, you just have bad taste.

We start out with Defacing God with the Resurrection of Lilith on Napalm Records. That’s right, I make fun of the label’s bands a lot. But I have to say this is not as terrible as most of the watered-down garbage on Napalm. That’s not to say that this isn’t a little goofy and obviously some sort of appropriation—I know, big words from a bird, right?—of black metal, but then again I could be wrong. This is black metal in some form, I mean everything is there, corpse paint, the tremolo picking, vocalist Sandie Gjørtz sounds appropriately evil, the keyboards are kinda spooky and the video is shot in a castle. What more could you need, right? Well, aside from the sameness of the songs, this just comes across like Napalm got some people together and started a black metal band, you know, like a black metal Monkees (who were way better than this). This could be an honest, hard-working black metal band, but riffs-wise, it seems really contrived. Not too bad for Hot Topic black metal. 5 Fucking Pecks (if I’m being generous).

Another live record has sprouted its ugly head, This birdbrain thinks these are really for extreme fans, but Paradise Lost is reissuing Live Death on DVD and for the first time ever on CD. This live record of a classic death/doom band is not modern, but instead from their 1989 show in Bradford—wherever the peck that is. What’s cool about this in my opinion, is the fact that the material is all from their Lost Paradise debut. This has a lot of early classic tracks packed in and really showcases vocalist Nick Holmes’s awesome growls. This is a cool glimpse into the past, and while Paradise Lost is still around, this shows off how it was “back in the day”. 6 Fucking Pecks.

Waldo out!