Gloomy Grim - Friendship Is Friendship, War Is War! demo 1997

Gloomy Grim - Friendship Is Friendship, War Is War! demo II 1997
1) War
2) Ashes
3) Blood
4) Reign

RGhost / Depositfiles

Back to metal, sort of at least, and yet another sending of master Sorvali's, this is Agathon's (in)famous Gloomy Grim and the second demo Friendship Is Friendship, War Is War! Geez, his naming sense did not improve by the tape, wonder what he'd called the third demo if one would've ever been made (note: there was actually a third demo, going by the rather pedestrian name "Grimoire" and released just last year!)? Gloomy Grim belonged to the same bunch of bands/projects as Soulgrind, Nomicon, Walhalla etc. and Agathon has also been a member of somewhat better known bands like Barathrum and Thy Serpent. All the name dropping and connections won't change the fact I could never take this seriously though, Agathon's naming tendencies combined with whatever track I initially heard back in '96/'97 plus the weariness I started to feel with the so-called circus synth "black" metal bands made me avoid them for the next ten years or so. Cover scans are included, as expected of Henu! Thanks for your work again.

So what sort of music does the notorious GG perform? Synth-based "black" or really dark metal which had some sort of horror concept, though that is not at all apparent on the lyrics which are really pretty straight forward antichristian dark metal, or black metal even. The horror feeling is more conveyed by the synths and music in general. A mean person might say the whole listening experience is the true source of horror but it's not as bad as my young self decided right away back in the day. Some bits are actually kind of cool but I still can't get over the certain (wrong sort of) uneasiness this tends to cause me. Agathon's voice really doesn't help either, always sounded really forced and clumsy to my ears. The programmed drums might be an issue to some as well and the synths can start to grate on larger doses. The bass sounds nice. In the end of the day it's still not coming back on my menu but perhaps there are connoisseurs of cheese who will enjoy this among the readers. Handle with care and store properly.