Progarchives, the progressive rock ultimate discography
Shub-Niggurath - Testament CD (album) cover

TESTAMENT

Shub-Niggurath

Zeuhl


From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Bookmark and Share
1 stars This is not how I want to remember Shub Niggurath.

This gross misuse of a good name is as far removed from the great first Shub Niggurath albums as it is possible to come. What we have here is seventy-two minutes of noise with no meaning whatsoever. Those who think Lou Reed's Metal Music is pointless, listen to this album. There is nothing here with the Shub Niggurath signature. This is not even Zeuhl or even remotely close to Zeuhl. This is just noise "created" with bass, some drums and some distorted guitars. There is no meaning here, no point and no artistic creativity besides of fooling fans of this band to hand over their money. This is not even avant-garde or RIO. This is just seventy two minutes of pointless noise. That's it.

1 star

Report this review (#298914)
Posted Sunday, September 12, 2010 | Review Permalink
Warthur
PROG REVIEWER
1 stars I thought Shub-Niggurath's earlier albums were OK but not brilliant zeuhl pieces which didn't really stand out from the crowd very much. This time around, though, they seem to be going for a dark ambient sound but are attempting to produce it using more or less conventional rock instrumentation. The end results are not appealing. They're neither quiet, slow, and placid enough to be particularly good ambient - not even industrial ambient - and there isn't quite enough happening for actual rock compositions to emerge from the noise. The end result is more or less indistinguishable from a band tuning up, or endlessly playing the intro to a song which never gets around to starting.
Report this review (#620629)
Posted Thursday, January 26, 2012 | Review Permalink
octopus-4
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR
RIO/Avant/Zeuhl,Neo & Post/Math Teams
1 stars From dark ambient to noisy. When you are expecting Zeuhl things like this can make one disappointed, so I have tried to listen to "Testament" as it was a psychedelic or an avant album but unfortunately this none of the two.

The band members have surely had some fun in recording this noise. Only the first track, the dark-ambient one deserves to be listened. The rest as I have written is just noise, without the research of new sounds or any experimental use of the instruments. If I think to other "noisy" numbers of other bands it's always possible finding something interesting even when there is no structure to follow.

In this case there is a bit of structure, mainly in "Part III", but I find it totally uninteresting and lacking of a meaning. Maybe giving a title to the tracks could have helped the listener in catching hidden messages if any, but there are no track titles, too.

The album sleeve is totally black, so no messages at all.

The title "Testament" in this environment may signify "take my goods and do what you want"...

So we too can do what we want of this album: use it as a frisbee, tie it to a scarecrow, or even listen to it, but keep in mind that your speakers are working fine, it's the album that has something wrong.

Report this review (#747953)
Posted Thursday, May 3, 2012 | Review Permalink
1 stars While I've never managed to get into the sludgy style of Shub-Niggurath, I can at least appreciate the niche they carved for themselves and why they are considered a cult classic.

This album though.... what's the point. I'm sure everyone who's reviewed it has had to pad out what they right in order to meet the minimum word count (as I've just done here) because there's absolutely nothing going on. It's as if each instrument is being played in a different room without being able to hear the other. It's like someone has thrown a drum kit down a huge flight of stairs, and then let any child who has done Grade 1 in music have free reign on their instrument of choice.

At best its a 70 minute tune-up. At worst its a pointless collection of noise. It's not Zeuhl, its not ambient, its not industrial. The tracks have even been made more boring by just numbering them, and the album cover is just blank.

Testament to what exactly?

Perhaps its just one big joke, seeing how much money they could make out of absolutely nothing.

Report this review (#2920828)
Posted Monday, May 1, 2023 | Review Permalink

SHUB-NIGGURATH Testament ratings only


chronological order | showing rating only

Post a review of SHUB-NIGGURATH Testament


You must be a forum member to post a review, please register here if you are not.

MEMBERS LOGIN ZONE

As a registered member (register here if not), you can post rating/reviews (& edit later), comments reviews and submit new albums.

You are not logged, please complete authentication before continuing (use forum credentials).

Forum user
Forum password

Copyright Prog Archives, All rights reserved. | Legal Notice | Privacy Policy | Advertise | RSS + syndications

Other sites in the MAC network: JazzMusicArchives.com — jazz music reviews and archives | MetalMusicArchives.com — metal music reviews and archives

Donate monthly and keep PA fast-loading and ad-free forever.