In my opinion, Christmas songs are either annoyingly cheesy and happy pieces about Santa Claus and his little fuckers or lame religious babble about that ceratin book of tales' miraculous baby.

Väliliha offer 41 seconds of cavernous sounding black metal style stuff, which this one man project has christened as santagrind. Well, 'Äänipuutarha' has 3 different riffs and a short piece of guitar solo, barked ho-ho-ho vocals and it ends abruptly. Nothing new here musicwise, as this kind of stuff has been already heard on 666 black metal demos this month alone! Distorted 'Kohtalon saarella' is as chaotic as it gets.

Grindustrial band Vihaliha are up next, for over a minute! Annoying computerized drum beats, sometimes distorted, are accompanied by simplistic grind riffing and sudden chaotic explosions. 'Chainsaw Santa' includes chainsawy guitar sound. Maybe 'Jouluyö, murhayö's synth work is meant to follow "annoyingly cheesy and happy pieces", but it fails to do that. Surprisingly, both grunted and shrieked vocals are actually understandable.

And neither of these bands are crushing, thanks to trebly recording. Distortion doesn't equal to crushing.

There's certainly no real cheese factor and religious bullshit here, so therefore this has nothing to do with Christmas, except lyrics. Both bands' first songs are the catchier ones, thanks to audible guitar work, otherwise this offered me nothing at all. If you know what you're getting and want to get it, contact bands fast, as this split EP is only available during December 2005. Oh, there's one Christmas thing after all: they are trying to get your money. However, this is also available for free download.

Rating: 1 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
12/19/2005 12:36