review by: ~Vargscarr~

If it wasn't for the first three stunning Ulver albums Garm released in the way back when, Perdition City wouldn't even get a glance on the shop shelf, let alone a listen from the vast majority of Metal music fans. Garm's back catalogue being what it is however, the album merits a review; just so anyone who might mistake this CD for the sequel to Nattens Madrigal is steered away from a purchase they'd undoubtedly regret.

The album bears the legend: "This is music for the stations before and after sleep. Headphones and darkness recommended." Garm neglects to advise the listener to have a copy of In the Nightside Eclipse handy to purge their minds of the abysmal syntho-shite that will assail their ears when they turn their attention to this album.

Perdition City is a soundtrack to the movie of life; and can best be described as unpleasantly urban. Very modern, very electronic, very synthetic (despite some nice saxophone and piano/keyboard work on the odd track); Perdition City conjures up images of sprawling city-scapes the likes of Tokyo and Los Angeles. No, I've never visited either city - which is I believe the very reason the album summons their exaggerated images to my mind.

This music is typical contemporary film soundtrack fair; and if accompanied by a movie would likely be inoffensive in its banality. However, listening to the album as it stands, the music is all we have; and as the vomit-inducing drum machine starts pumping out its mainstream beats, and the samples of various instruments and sound effects kick in and trap me in an aural hell of the polluted, grey reality the world defecates on me every time I step out of the door magnified tenfold; I begin to realize that Limp Bizkit isn't all that bad, really...

Garm warbles about such things as walking over to the other side of town, streetlights, gravel-strewn pedestrian subways - in short all that Black Metal wants to make us forget by burying it in our minds under a carpet of troll-inhabited forests of thick, shadowy trees, snow-capped Nordic mountains and the bodies of those who worship mundane reality like "Trickster G" (as Garm apparently now likes to be addressed).

I'm certain the critics of mainstream music will love this, as will fans of Radiohead and urban poetry; but I'm afraid that is not me. While this album is undoubtedly skillfully constructed, and achieves exactly what it seeks to; it is the worst form of anti-escapism after dance music, and I'd rather have my teeth pulled out of my own rear end than listen to it again.