### The Oath: 4

#### 11/09/08 || theProphet

I should stop reviewing shit sent to us here at GD. The time I’ve wasted on reviewing sub-standard bands must now have amounted to a serious portion of the time I listen to music in general. I think I’ve discovered one good band this way, which was Ibogaïne, and sometimes the albums is hilariously bad and I get to have some fun bashing them and the review probably turns out to be more entertaining. Most of the time though, what I’ve reviewed here is as reaction-provoking as a glass of lukewarm water (and no, it’s not half full or half empty, just containing the amount of water that glasses usually do, seriously you won’t find anything to discuss here, no matter how hard you try).

The Oath falls into that category. They certainly aren’t bloody awful, but I see absolutely no reason that anybody should need “4” in their black metal collection. ‘Cause that’s what The Oath is all about. Black metal. Now, The Oath certainly doesn’t care much for black metal aesthetics since there is no corpsepaint to be seen anywhere and all the band members have nice haircuts. Nothing wrong with that, you don’t have to look like a medieval badger-troll to hate in my opinion. What does piss me off is that The Oath had the utter indecency to include on their MySpace a medley of parts from the new album, “4”, instead of actual songs. If there’s anything I hate musicwise it’s not giving people entire songs to listen to when they want to check out your band. This has gotta be stupid, like who decides to buy an album based on a 40 second snippet of one song, right? Fuck dat. Other things I hate are promo versions that are interrupted by a speaker telling you what it is you’re listening to and also hidden tracks. Fuck hidden tracks.

Moving onwards, The Oath plays a smoothly produced, unabrasive, keyboardladen type of black metal that interests me fuck all. There’s a nice riff here and a some nice harmonies there, sure, but you really have to try harder than this to grab me by the stones. On the song “Orgasm” the vocalist even breaks out in some clean singing, and surprisingly, this turns out to be the most memorable thing on the entire album, and for good reasons for once. I wouldn’t call it an orgasm though, more like waking up with a boner, I guess.

I don’t really have anything more to say about “4”. There’s absolutely nothing groundbreaking going on here, but if the only band have ever listened to is Naglfar and you feel like hearing what they would be like if the sucked more and were a little different, then by all means, go listen to that fucking medley.

5.5 reaction-provoking glasses of frostbitten water that is half empty (‘cause empty is the darker alternative) out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2008
- Label: Code666 Records
- Website: The Oath MySpace
- Band
- Destroyer: vocals, guitar
- Drako: guitars
- Peter Pal: keyboards
- Carcharoth: bass
- Tyrael: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. 4 (intro)
- 02. This Day
- 03. Orgasm
- 04. A Question of Faith
- 05. Unholy Blood
- 06. The Unborn
- 07. Lifeless Desire
- 08. Dead Inside
- 09. War
- 10. Godless Existence