In the good ol’ tradition of weirdo bands like Xysma and Convulsed who took a left turn away from a straight up diabolic sound never to come back again, the material included in this split shows the Jyväskylä quartet Verge experimenting with lugubrious psychedelia. The first song is called “Spiritual Promisquity and it is a bizarre showing because despite the keyboard driven music sounding more like the soundtrack to a Russ Meyer film, it features the vocals of Wrong doing its typical creepy approach. Wrong’s delivery is painful and insufferable, like the agitated purging of a dying man whose last wish is to jerk off to a Julia Childs video.
Verge are not your mother’s black metal band. That is obvious. But when they get down to their bread and butter they still sound out of left field. In more straight ahead sounding cuts like “Blood Fist of Soul’s Death II“ the guitars sound atonal and alternate with casual black metal flash riffage. As to maintain their strange persona, other songs like “Because It’s Wrong” maintain church organ as their backbone. It’s a gothic touch that’s by no means meant to sweeten up the proceedings, it is one in fact that makes the listener want to keep more distance from the band. After all, who knows what kind of pervs they are?
Blood Red Fog on the other hand have included four tracks but with each of them clocking at around ten minutes it feels like they have included nine or ten. It is not the sheer length what makes their music tiresome, but the flimsy and unimaginative structures of their music. Blood Red Fog wants to literally make a whole story out of one idea and the shortcomings show.
With songs as mundane as “Rite of Madness” it is obvious that Blood Red Fog had the best of intentions of writing puppy-eyed music, sad black metal for depressed headbangers, but if all they have to offer is slow riffs that because of their lack of feel evoke nothing, then they are running into trouble. It is obvious that to incite a reaction the music of Blood Red Fog needs more ambience. In parts it is apparent that maybe borrowing the church organ from the folks of Verge would do them good, but when that seems the case, like during the exhausting “Flesh Altar”, all we get is about eight minutes of vague ideas and one last minute, when the band finally seems to wake up from its own slumber.
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