### Halo Of Flys: Death, pain, & minds insane

#### 23/03/12 || Smalley

Yes, the band actually spells it “Halo of flys”; not a typo on my part, for once. Anyway, the most I could find about these fuckos came from their official Facebook, which stated that they’re “TRUE Dark Gothic Metal”, they’re for fans of “Type O Negative, Alice Cooper, My Dying Bride” and others, and that they’re the “haunted & demented” brainchild of Mark Ping and some other guy called Mike Emerson, a “reclusive progressive rock fan & brilliant musician whose true genius is behind the keyboard, where he is able to evoke the true atmosphere of many different nightmares”.

Obscure new band claiming to be TRUE dark Gothic metal, with barely any 3rd party info available online for ‘em, and with a shitload of pretentious, name-dropping, self-fellating smoke being blown up our asses from their press release? You guessed it; no good. Not even close to being good; I mean, “Death, pain, & minds insanely inane” actually isn’t all that annoying a listen, but it’s still quite bad due to hilarious incompetence. What the band must’ve heard as dark metal just sounds like silly, campy, plodding music with carnival keyboards, stupidly obscured, bored-sounding vocals (which kind of remind me of some of the vox on “Into the pandemonium”, not a good thing) and hardly any metal at all. If whiny, dull music trying (and failing miserably) to be a metal version of The Cure sounds your speed, go for it, but leave me alone.

2/10: Yer average power metal band sounds more evil than these guys; be gone!