It is a good thing the label warns that Devil’s Whorehouse is a side project of Morgan Steinmeyer Hakansson and B. War of Marduk. Otherwise, you would be upset an excellent black metal band is no more. No, the problem is not in the fact Devil’s Whorehouse plays a mixture of punk and death rock instead of black metal. It is rather in the fact that Devil’s Whorehouse is just not that good overall.

Raw, grinding guitar sound of the intro Death from Beyond is a sign of things to come. If you can’t take your guitars as they are, coming intentionally underproduced with a garage feeling, this isn’t for you. Lazy semiblast and moaning vocals of Zweeda carry on forth an otherwise energetic Swallow Your Soul. If things were this way on the rest of Revelation Unorthodox I’d take it, unfortunately the band chose to go with some songs which are extremely boring, monotonous and devoid of energy. Cuts like Bondage Goddess, Blood Angels Recital, Erotikill and Funeral Dream are endless same-chord-repeated-thousand-times exercises. You wonder if deceased in Funeral Dream would like to make it to the cemetery faster, so the music stops. The only slower song on the album I liked was The Raven with its decent main guitar hook.

When things pick up in energy, they don’t tend to last very long – Pentagram Murderer being the best example. More rock’n’roll, more Clash, more screaming in the vocal department – but the song lasts just over 1.5 min. Quick bursts of Blood Nymphoman and We Live Again come towards the end of the album, when the listener (me) just lost hope.

Morgan Hakansson knows how he wanted his guitar to sound on this album, and I am sure that is what Tommy Tagtgren of The Abyss Studio did for Devil’s Whorehouse. Guitar music is a series of repeating chords which needs to be made sound “dirty”. Drumming follows simple patterns, but really nothing of this stuff is complex, however, I think this is the way it was supposed to be, a few rebellious souls cooking together a quick album. The worst aspect of the band sound must be the vocals. Zweeda is an example of why true death metal growl or black metal screech is million times better than death rock monotonous moan, something the album is overflowing with. The fact they aren’t clean doesn’t bother me one bit, but they sound non-emotional, like they are coming from a drunk man who simply yells/barks/spits out the lyrics without a slight regard of where music is actually going. Being inspired by horror and death filled movies, the album uses a few vocal effects and samples, which really didn’t add or subtract much.

I could blame this review squarely on myself for not understanding stoner/death rock. About the only band in the genre I like is Babylon Whores, as well as a couple of tracks from Lotus album by Joachim Cans’ old-old band Mrs. Hippie. Otherwise, this just isn’t clicking for me. I am not a huge fan of punk rock either. I don’t like Misfits or Abdullah and I really don’t like Samhain. For some reason such music seems to me half-baked. Being so much biased, I was hoping Revelation Unorthodox by Devil’s Whorehouse would break this mold. Instead, it just cemented it. The fans of the genre are free to like this, and drop me a line in the forums.