Frostbitten - The Void of Insanity
This is already the second Frostbitten album released this year. The first, We Prayed Under the Altar of Luna, is mostly Black Metal but had one track on it (“Altar of Luna”) that was Stoner/Doom. The Void of Insanity, though, is all Doom. When I reviewed We Prayed Under the Altar of Luna, I said that Frostbitten was better at playing Doom. Apparently, Frostbitten (the sole member of the band) agreed with me. Insanity is only marginally better than Luna, which is a bit of a disappointment. Frostbitten reminds me of Wrest from Leviathan in that he pumps out a tremendous amount of material each year. On top of We Prayed Under the Altar of Luna, Frostbitten has just released two instrumental Drone/Doom albums under the name Los (one entitled Darkness and the other, Light), and already has a new one (We Feared the Wrath of Lord Lucifer) as Frostbitten. That’s a total of five albums so far this year, and we’re only about a third of the way into 2013. If we were talking about Tupac, I could see this happening because all of those releases would be remix LPs instead of new, original material. Frostbitten is blasting out albums like an ADHD kid amped up on Red Bull. In marketing, we refer to this as “flooding the zone” and it’s a tactic that tends not to work. The Void of Insanity shows the weakness of this strategy. This could have been a better album. The playing is sloppy and the songs are very rough sounding; the hallmarks of someone rushing the development process in order to get a product to market. Frostbitten is opting for quantity over quality, and that’s always bad. There are some good ideas here, but they’re underdeveloped. Having twenty releases out there sounds impressive, but if they’re all crap, what’s the point? I doubt that Frostbitten will read this or follow my advice, but my recommendation is that he should slow down and work on his music a little more. Taking the time to develop a good song and getting the recording/production right always results in a better product. This sounds like it should be a demo or a rehearsal instead of a full-length LP. From a marketing perspective, it’s is a hard sell at best. Frostbitten has potential. I can hear things on The Void of Insanity that tell me that there is talent and creativity underneath the sloppiness. If those things can be refined and properly displayed, Frostbitten could, one day, be mentioned in the same breath as Angel Witch or Cathedral. But that day isn’t today.
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