We had written a negative review about Shining’s Black Jazz, essentially saying it was yet another example of an established black metal band getting all artsy-fartsy on our collective asses and looking like fools.

Wait for the plot twist.

We had said Shining’s Halmstad had us thinking for a second that an album by a dedicated black metal band featuring the word "jazz" in it wouldn’t suck.

But suck it does. And aggressively. For all its ambition, Black Jazz doesn’t bring jazz to mind, and certainly not black metal, but rather a spastic take on electronica with black metally vocals, and with a sonic aesthetic that strongly evokes dance club music.

Wait for it.

Dueling it out with the rest of the frenetic, synthetic, audial harassment is the freak out saxophone, sounding about as unmusical as just about everything else present. The saxophonist is obviously totally great (as are the other musicians on Black Jazz), but, like the rest of the hare-brained, musical epilepsy on the album, is arranged and produced so that it seems like all the parts are thrown at each other to gratuitous and obnoxious effect.

Just one more paragraph...

The best aspects of Black Jazz are when you get the impression that the album will finally be over, which unfortunately doesn’t happen the first time you sense the end is near, but on the third time. Even if Black Jazz weren’t released by yet another Scandinavian black metal band abandoning its style for something entirely forcibly "avant garde" or cool — and failing miserably — it would be insufferable... but that it’s supposed to appeal to a black metal audience is pretty shameless.

And here it is...

And after all this apparent absurd effort, just to shoot one’s career in the foot, it comes to be revealed that Black Jazz was not made by Swedish black metal band Shining at all, but rather by a *Norwegian* outfit by the same name, and, in a twist of hilarious irony, believably sounding like a Scandinavian black metal band would if it had sold out. That’s the metal joke of the year, right there.

Maybe a bigger joke is that Shining (Nor) might not only have messed up their career by not changing their name despite making a high-profile album that is meant to appeal (in some way) to a black metal audience under the same name as a highly recognized group largely in the same genre, but also managed to fuck up Shining (Swe)’s career, too. How many people will be talking about how Shining has sold out after hearing Black Jazz, and getting confused? We did.

In Shining (Nor)’s defense, they aren’t a new band blatantly plagiarizing another group. We’d like to think so, at least. Shining (Nor) has been around since 2001 (Shining (Swe)’s first full-length album was in 2000), and Black Jazz is apparently their fourth album. Not that we’ve heard hide nor hair of anything they’ve done before. Maybe the foray into black metal territory is a new development?

Regardless of history, when there’s a band that’s way bigger than yours in the same genre with the same name that you have, and particularly when they’ve been doing it longer than you have, you change your name. Period.

Meanwhile, the real Shining has released an album in 2009, it’s called VI: Klagopsalmer. Remember, Maelstrom readers, if there’s no Roman numeral, don’t buy it. It’s a fake.

Hey, The End Records! Maybe you’d like to sign my band? We play a hybrid of black metal and be-bop. We’re called Mayhem. Not only can you cash in by misdirecting people into buying our album, but you can make yourselves, us, and every metal buying person look like idiots. I hope you guys retain good lawyers.

Pre-heinous revelation, when we thought it was Swedish Shining committing career suicide (haha), Black Jazz received a 2/10. But the actual, laughable truth makes this an album that we won’t even give a rating to, because assigning a number to it would show some level of acceptance, no matter how slight. (Ridiculous/10)

P.S.: To further the absurdity, it turns out that both Shinings are signed to the same label in Europe.