The Worst of the Best Part 1

A journey through the worst greens of the sheet

There is a saying I invented that goes: ”to really know someone, you have to look at what he likes that everyone else hates”. As the leader of this godforsaken place, it’s my duty to understand the best I can all the plebes going frantically around those absurd and obsessive sheets. For that, I obviously decided to go through it in the most masochistic way. For users with over 100 rates, I would listen to their worst ranked green on the sheet, provide some commentary, and a voïevoda approved rating. There were 22 albums, 11 of which will be discussed in this article and another 11 saved for the second part. 

Note: The ranks presented in this article were current as of December 3, 2022.

Will some gems be buried in there or do those albums deserve to be left where they are? Let’s find out.

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Vortexer: ferday

Album: Noble Déchet - Astral D​é​chu
Rank: 1182 | ferday’s rate: 7/10 | My accurate rating : 5/10 

In the past two years, wacky black metal is a genre that welcomed a lot of new players trying to hide their poor writing and musical abilities by adding gimmicky sound effects, weird instruments and playing like they just drank three bottles of absinthe before recording. And if they speak French like the OG Peste Noire, that’s even better - you can just write lyrics that are complete nonsense and they will get a pass by being quirky. The worst offender is the circus black metal band Pensées Nocturnes, but the Quebecois-based Noble Déchet are not that far off. They do get more points for being more interesting in the way they destructure their music and make it completely insane with unusual songwriting. That doesn’t make it good though, as they fail to bring something else to the table. It becomes slightly irritating that the constant clashing between the different elements of the music makes it ultimately a bit formless. 

Vortexer: Abso

Album: Noircure - Kyrie
Rank: 1219 | Abso’s rate: 7/10 | My accurate rating : 4/10 

From our favorite (and only) Spanglish, here comes boredom as an album, perfect accompaniment to a good night’s sleep. Starting like classic atmoblack, the first song has lots of reverb, blasts and tremolo. The second song starts with an acoustic guitar sounding and riffing like Opeth onHarvest, where the poor singer, being both asthmatic and afflicted by throat cancer, tries to vaguely scream something, before being cut off by the blast beats and tremolo guitar returning from their coffee break. He also attempts to do some clean vocal passages through the album that go as well as you can expect: imagine Steven Wilson on Xanax with aphonia. All the songs repeat that formula, Opeth-like acoustic sections with no dynamics and shitty harsh vocals - blast beat and tremolo - add some clean vocals here and there. Overall not horrible but the 50 minute length makes it a red. Also never add three seconds of silence between each of your tracks, it ruins any mood or dynamics in an album. 

Vortexer: ScoopMeister

Album: Imperial Circus Dead Decadence - 殯――死へ耽る想いは戮辱すら喰らい、彼方の生を愛する為に命を讃える――
Rank: 1212 | ScoopMeister’s rate: 7/10 | My accurate rating : 5/10 

The problem with Scoop is that he likes power metal. Well, that’s not the only problem with him but that’s the important one here. What we have here is a mix of brickwalled Japanese melodeath and cringe power metal with a big tiddy kitsune waifu on the album cover. The riffage is decent, but the album is very messy, doing too many things at once which makes it hard to digest. The vocals are quite interesting, you have a male and female lead, who can switch from pretty good melodic lines to being completely out of tune in a flash, then have pig squeals on top of them transitioning to your usual death metal growl, all topped off by gang shouts. 

Last year we had Bloody Cumshot in a similar but more restrained and effective style that had the good idea to make their album 28 minutes long. Not. Fucking. 70. Minutes. Long. Overall this album alternates between decently epic writing and eye-roll inducing moments, which makes it frustrating. The 2nd and 5th songs were the best in my very humble, but accurate and fair opinion, but I rarely find an album that can alternate between 7/10 to 3/10 that fast, so 5/10 overall. 

Vortexer: Meri

Album: Zeal & Ardor - Zeal & Ardor
Rank: 988 | meri’s rate: 7/10 | My accurate rating : 5/10 

Ah yes Zeal & Ardor, the favorite black metal band of people that don’t listen to black metal. To be fair, the experimental and avant-garde nature of it, infused with some afro-american musical influence often makes for an interesting listen. The major problem of Zeal & Ardor is the ability to tie all those influences together in a coherent way and be able to write an album that stays consistent in its quality and does not repeat itself. I often enjoy songs from them, but rarely enjoy the full album, which is again the case here. We have some pretty solid songs like Death to the Holy that manages that mix of gospel and post-black, and then completely forgettable ones like Emersion or Feed the Machine. Most heavy songs do have the same structure with gospel influence and hand claps, then transitioning to heavier riffs when the song is good, and chugs when the song is bad.

The album is also tanked by a very loud production that leaves no space for the vocals and makes for a tiring experience, which is partly why this album feels too long despite being 44 minutes. I hope one day they can reach their full potential, with a good sounding album that will not make my ears bleed. 

Vortexer: Carlos

Album: Sewer Seed - Sewer Seed
Rank: 5444 | Carlos’ rate: 7/10 | My accurate rating : 2/10 

We got a big name here, the master of overrating awful albums from Australia, the insane man that got almost 200 albums rated above 7 just for this year, the legend from Marrickville, Carlos. The first thing that instantly pleased my heart is the incredible run time of 14 minutes, which means a short and swift suffering. Starting with a clipping wall of white noise with some woosh shenanigans going on, you know right at the start you really are in the sewer of the sheet, if you know what I mean (please send help). The second song is as formless as the first, but with some screeching over it which really adds to the experience. 

The second part of the album starts with what seems to be vocals and a song structure, I guess ? I really don’t know, this is some of the laziest shit I have ever listened to, the only redeeming feature is its length, nobody in their right mind would give this a 7 or even care about it. I would rather live with a huntsman spider than listen to this again. 

Vortexer: strawberrydeluxe

Album: Black Dresses - Forget Your Own Faces
Rank:  5494 | strawberrydeluxe’s rate: 7/10 | My accurate rating : 4/10 

Another member with, let’s say, “peculiar” tastes. Sourced directly from rateyourmusic (rym), strawb often forgets where he is and starts overrating awful albums. Which leads us to quite a big name now, particularly in the rym circle, Black Dresses. As always they succeed in making their albums as annoying as possible, with an almost unlistenable production, pointless aggression, and chaotic writing. I don’t hate Black Dresses as much as the usual vortexer, but this style will never do it for me, and I think it’s too easy to voluntarily write bad music and say it’s ok because that’s the concept. It’s way too edgy for its own good and makes me cringe way too much to not warrant a red. The length is mercilessly short, and I can get behind songs that have a bit more writing in them like “NO NORMAL”, but I think they will never go in a direction that will please me more. So I hope I can avoid their next album, but I’m sure a certain someone will inevitably overrate it.

Vortexer: Planex

Album: MACROSS 82-99 - SAILORWAVE III
Rank: 4551 | Planex’s rate: 7/10 | My accurate rating : 6/10 

More weeb stuff! But that’s not surprising coming from Planex, who is the weebest weeb on the server. The music consists of funky beats that could be found on an a-ha song, but instead of a good singer, you get random anime girl noises, add some high and low pass filters here and there and you’re good to go. I’m not gonna lie I have kinda been digging some Pet Shop Boys or Duran Duran this year, so this does scratch an itch in the 80’s cheesy groove department. But I don’t think it’s doing enough to get a special rate, it can’t really shake the watered down Daft Punk feeling I have on some samples. The transitions are a bit awkward and the gimmicky anime noises can be irritating - I much preferred the songs with a real singer on them. Overall, still a pleasant and groovy listen that has been rated quite harshly by the other listeners.

Vortexer: Goldicot

Album: Polterwytch - 5 Curses of the Polterorgel
Rank: 3547 | Goldicot’s rate: 7/10 | My accurate rating : 5/10 

In the past two years, wacky black metal is a genre that welcomed a lot of new players trying to hide their poor writing and musical abilities by adding gimmicky sound effects, weird instruments and mixing the whole to have a negative DR. Déjà Vu? That’s what you get when you go through the Grime Stone Records catalog. An ungodly amount of horribly produced black metal mixed with wacky dungeon synths that often gets green scores by some of the sick minds wandering around this place. And I must plead guilty because I have greened GSR’s most famous and prominent band Old Nick and their magnum opus Ghost O’Clock. One day, Old Nick will decide to finally produce a listenable album that better highlights their composition and writing skills that goes beyond their gimmicky approach. That’s not the case with Polterwytch. Recorded (probably, to be confirmed) in the scrotum of a goblin, the drums crash more than a Tesla on autopilot, the guitars probably weren’t tuned and only the synth is remotely listenable. I think it’s a bit of a shame because there are some interesting riffs and melodies going on behind the clipping, and I hope in the future GSR will drop the voluntary awful production for something that would serve their music a bit more. 

Vortexer: Quillon

Album: Rammstein - Zeit
Rank: 3543  | Quillon’s rate: 7/10 | My accurate rating : 4/10 

Ah Quill, a man with very unique tastes, in particular when it comes to electronic adjacent music. Adequately tagged with the genre ”Olde Deutsche Färhts” in the sheet, Rammstein follows a pretty decent comeback album with what feels like the leftovers of said album. The opener confirmed Rammstein’s inability to write riffs anymore, just mindless chugs on the usual martial rhythmic section with quirky synth.  The rest is pretty piss poor too, lots of ballads which were never Rammstein’s forte, the faster tracks could have been written by a YouTuber doing a ”We write a Rammstein song in a day” video, and in that sea of mediocrity, there is something even worse. Dicke Titten is a horrible song - worse than laziness and poor composition, is lazy, poorly composed self-parody. It’s like they didn’t even care about the album, and just wanted to release something before the world tour to get a bit more attention after the previous tour was canceled due to The Virus. This album is not that bad, it’s just super sad.  

Vortexer: Scuttlegoat

Album: Bloodbox - Post Human Disorder
Rank: 4815 | Scuttlegoat’s rate: 7/10 | My accurate rating : 5/10 

Time for some grindcore and another short album.I have my theory on why they are so common and I will explain in the conclusion of the first part of this article. So stay until the end, smash that subscribe button and ring the bell. Back to the music, and every grindcore album should start with a spoken word sample from a TV news show, because how else would you know that you are living in a society? Apparently it’s about cannibalism, which is a very original theme for that genre. Otherwise the main originality comes from the alternating of your usual blast beats/screams and electronic elements. Unfortunately the guitars sound horrible, which makes all riffs liable to end up in a complete and formless mush. There are some more chill electronic sections that help this album to not be too annoying, and I think some songs like Turn the Tide are actually decent. I can see what their artistic direction is, it’s a bit more surprising than your bog standard grind, overall better than some stuff I have heard previously.

Vortexer: Aker

Album: Yeule - Glitch Princess
Rank: 1156 | Aker’s rate: 7/10 | My accurate rating : 5/10 

This scared me at first, because the length was 5 hours and 27 minutes and I wonder how Aker in his right mind could give that a green (well even if Aker is never in his right mind). But then you check and the last track lasts 4h44 and it’s a bonus track, so it doesn’t count and everything is fine again. What we have here is another gimmicky genre, where the use of electronic bleeps and bloops clash with a more ethereal pop element. Adequately named glitch pop, it’s again a case of gimmicks taking over writing compelling or more complex music. It’s an amusing coincidence that I can make a common criticism between the first album I listened to and the last one of this list, but making quirky unstructured music can only be interesting for a while before you need something else to make the music good. I think these kinds of writing tropes often lack dynamics and a way to make the albums flow naturally. Fortunately, there is a moment where this album manages to avoid this trap. Between Perfect Blue and Bites on My Neck, the middle of the album has strong and varied songs, the best one being Too Dead Inside. It’s a shame the rest isn’t as good and engaging, with some really forgettable or annoying songs. I think her voice is quite good, even if I’m not digging all the experimentation and processing going over it. At the end it’s a bit too much on the edgy side and I like my music with a bit more flow, but it’s still above average. 

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And that’s it for the first part of this series, another 11 albums will follow soon and I wonder if I will find the same tendencies. First a lot of albums here were sub-30 minutes, and most of them had some kind of quirk making them quite original, in a way. The conclusion I’m making is that the people here clicked with the gimmicks from those albums and that their short length doesn’t make their flaws too apparent for them. But on the other side, if those gimmicks annoy you, you will tank the album with a 2 or 3 which will make it drop toward the depths of the sheet.