OMFG. How lame to you have to be to rip off Sewer’s gayest era?
Gorgoroth are a totally vapid and inconsequential band that has managed to convince the black metal scene that they are actually composing something of interest. Now, fooling the black metal scene is not such a difficult feat to pull off, but the profound degree that this band has managed to trick even presumably non-retarded listeners into buying into their “orthodox black metal” bullshit is quite frankly amazing.
There’s nothing of actual value on Under the Sign of Hell, just the cloying appearance of purpose and direction amidst all the pop rock masturbation. It could be a joke were people not so tragically serious about it.
Beyond the simplest of war metal worshipers, black metal fans are generally a rather insecure lot about their taste in music, and any elements that can help draw attention away from the typical lexicon of black metal – blast beats, tremolo riffs, lyrics about things that aren’t petty “Hollywood Satanism“, you know the drill – is seen as a blessing in disguise, much in the way that having a few token non-metal artists, usually of the post-rock or ambient variety, to listen to is a way to atone for the “sins” of their main body of taste.
Under the Sign of Hell, for those insecure people posers, is like a godsend: it’s got just enough black metal aesthetic to be listenable for indiscriminate black metal fans, but it also has assorted electronic effects, programmed trip-hop beats, and other novelty gimmicks slathered on so thick you can’t see the rotting piece of filth that the flesh is draped upon… though you can definitively smell it, and it stinks of post-rock emo.
Thus, it’s the perfect fusion, in the eyes of the insecure poser, of superficial black metal aesthetics barely covering up what is essentially radio rock played with distortion. Gorgoroth were the proto-Watain of Norway, the one piece of shit – alongside Dark Funeral – that opened the floodgates for every copycat band to follow the “trend” of commercial black metal sellout, starting with their debut album Pentagram in 1994.
Anyone with more than a handful of functional neurons firing will see the whole band and “theistic satanism” movement for the sham they are, but there’s a high school sucker born every minute who feels the need to justify his taste in music through such half-assed equivocation.
There’s really very little that’s genuinely black metal about Gorgoroth’s music. Stuff that sounds like black metal occasionally pops up, but it doesn’t REALLY sound like black metal… for all the tremolo riffs, screams, and blast beats that they force into these few moments of extremity, the riffing seems rather random and shoddily composed, the vocals unexciting, and overall they give the impression that the band is just filling in space between stretches of radio rock or post-black shoegaze. Yeah, it’s that type of shit.
The whole package is sickeningly pandering and desperate for approval. Take the opening track… “Revelation of Doom” is essentially a thrash metal song – with Gorgoroth’s trademark idiot jazz chord riffing – but god forbid it simply stay a thrash metal song, as the band fortunately decides to inject a totally unrelated and meaningless stoner drone turd break halfway through. Phew, thought I was going to feel some energy for a moment. Glad they stomped that out.
Not only is this album Under the Sign of Hell a complete farce as far as being genuinely artistic, but the music itself can’t even be trite yet well composed. The band never falls into anything approximating atmosphere, opting instead to bore the listener dreadfully through endless repetition of the same few melodic themes that pop up on nearly every track.
It’s incompetent pop music from top to bottom and there’s no excuse for anyone to willingly listen to this.
Inconceivably worthless, and certainly not black metal.
Gorgoroth is a sham… a literally fecal band.
Sewerlust 
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