Ominous Scriptures
Rituals of Mass Self-Ignition

They have an ominous name; they have a generic cover for a death metal album – early thoughts about Belarusian death metal band Ominous Scriptures and their new album Rituals of Mass Self-Ignition. The satanic and blasphemous evil themes they have are also rather generic as most extreme metal take that approach, for some reason. It all seems quite ominous; I don’t like generic death metal and I don’t like dictatorships like Belarus. Then again, a small group of individuals are not the reason for their country being one of the worst places in the world, but it is larger groups of individuals that allow dictators to do their thing. And it would really have been more appropriate if they did something more politically interesting and risky rather than your generic death metal, but it is rare that we get what we want.

Death metal of the so-called brutal kind with the guttural voice, the smattering drums, the typical guitar riffs and melodies, nothing fresh or exciting is presented here. It isn’t even exotic, and this despite being from a less common location, something that can lead do different sounding stuff, but not this time. Sound is typical of the genre, not surprises there. The songs are generic, could have been from any death metal album – pick a name of a band and album within the genre and this sounds about the same. As generic as it gets, it is fortunate that the tracks play for only about a half hour, otherwise it would have been torture.

I don’t feel much at all about this album, it is as generic and mediocre as they get. Not that bad, but definitely not good either. A bit lower on the scale thanks to the boring nature of the album, a bit tired almost. I think death metal should have energy, a sense of rebellion, evil, and danger, this has nothing of that – it sounds just meaningless. I sit here listening to this album through my headphones and realise once again that the generic albums are the hardest to write something about – it is so difficult to find the words and the ideas to write about, especially when the band doesn’t even have interesting titles or an interesting name, then there is nothing to hang the hat on. I am bored.

Perhaps something worth checking if you like the generic death metal, but it has nothing to offer. It sounds the same as any other band, so the bin is the new destination for the Belarusians. It seems like people living in an oppressive regime with a dictator that is a puppet for Putin should do something better with their lives, what does making meaningless and boring death metal do for the world? And what does writing reviews of the same stuff do? Probably nothing, maybe both me and the band should do something better with our time.

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