Black metal for misanthropic Luddites gets another boost from Wrath. Raw, orthodox production values and defiance of modern recording technology are on display once again. Cursing Your Will To Live is album number three in a year and a half, and he managed a split release in there as well.

Usually such a proliferation would be cause for concern over quality controls, but Wrath does not disappoint, though I’m sure he would say he is writing for no one but himself. The disciple of Akhenaten probably wishes for you to die in a car crash, preferably taking others with you. Seventy minutes in duration, this album seems short. The songs are shorter and more focused, angrier, and more aggressive, which makes the hour and ten minutes fly past. Just in case you have not been hit in the head hard enough or often enough to grasp the message of these songs, Wrath spells in out for you, “I am a nihilist by philosophy. Humans are the cancer of this world.”

Akhenaten worked simple riffs repeated throughout a song to near perfection. Wrath does his best to carry on the tradition. Simple catchy riffs repeated many many times with slight variations, sloppiness or intentional I do not know, moves the music forward incrementally. Layered guitar lines fill in and add texture. Even the fast blastbeat driven songs like the title track are still guitar driven. Sometimes it gets repetitive to the point of mesmerizing, especially in “Your Death, My Propitiation”, or is it mind numbing. Once you get past the movie sample, “I Kept Standing with Disgust”, is short and blazing fast. I can’t imagine Wrath can get any angrier than this. That is something I’d like to hear, probably in another six months or so. “Under A Broken Cross, I Buried Your World” is the most out of place track, six minutes of movie samples, shrieks, moans, croaks, wails over a static noise track. There is no musical progression and we learn that he is following his own path. We also get a preacher threatening that your soul will burn in everlasting fire. I have only one question for Wrath, are you the torturer or the torture victim here?

If you want to complain about sound quality pull out your copy of Motorhead Slayground and put it on the turntable for a few spins and then come back to Dodsferd. It sounds great the way it is to me, but that should get the rest of you to appreciate this disc as well. Some bands would benefit greatly from a skilled producer, others, like this one would suffer.

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