INQUISITOR – THE QUANTUM THEORY OF ID (Forgotten Path)

Avant-garde Black Metal? What is that anyway? I’m not sure. And I don’t want to know. The concept makes me feel ill and I’ve yet to encounter a so-called avant-garde Black Metal band that doesn’t sound like shite. It should just be called ‘not Black Metal’. If you want coffee, then don’t order fucking avant-garde coffee. No point looking at an avant-garde television; get a real one.  If you want Black Metal, then buy a Black Metal record. Nothing else will suffice. There’s no halfway house. How can there be?

In the case of Inquisitor, their form of non-BM sounds to me like technical Death Metal, with crazy piano parts and cerebral lyrics and a thrashing classic Death Metal sound. Definitely more like Gorgots or Cryptopsy than Mayhem or Burzum. I’m not sure why this isn’t marketed as Death. Maybe Black Metal is an attitude, not a sound. Perhaps the moon is really a chunk of cheese hanging from the rooftop of my leafy suburban home. Who knows?

As Death Metal goes, this is pretty okay-ish, I suppose. Not great but good. I had predispositioned myself to despise this once I saw that word but I’ve heard worse, in fairness. It’s competently played and well written and quite ambitious in scope. A lot of people will like this, I’m sure. Especially fans of bands like Behemoth and Vader. In a nutshell, it’s an adequate slab of Lithuanian black death without the black.

Evilometer: 222/666