White Death turn black metal into pop rock on their self-titled album, White Death, for scenesters who want to be tough and are mad that black metal songwriting was based melodic narratives instead of hooky pop-singalongs like Gothenburg metal. White Death aim to reach out to that group of scenesters who used to shop at Hot Topic back when they were teenagers. White Death even have an edgy Finnish nationalist theme to go with their generic, non-descript Satanism! Scenesters don’t have to want to send the world back to the Dark Ages anymore, they can just drink beer for the evil and chant sing-alongs about the 5’3 Simo Häyhä shooting hundreds of frost-bitten Ivans! Wait White Death’s lyrics are not even about the Winter War, just generic mall Satanism; the Auntie Anne’s Pretzels of evil.

White Death’s riffing is a generic pastiche of black metal’s past. You have heard everything here a thousand times time before. Mayhem, Gorgoroth, Enslaved, and Sorcier des Glaces are all bent over and beaten with a crow bar into hooky singalongs with Cradle of Filth vocals for appeal to everyone in the audience with eyeliner and nailpolish who questioned their masculinity as toxic at some point. White Death are so soft they make 1993 Ihsahn with his greasy mullet and school shooter trench coat seem like he was in the Cro-Mags.

White Death is yet another release of Nuclear War Now! forum mallrat metalcore just like their compatriots Sargeist, Horna, and Satanic Warmaster. These Finnish bands do not play “raw black metal” like Sarcofago, Blasphemy, and Beherit; they play metalcore and black ‘n’ roll for a an audience that has hideous tattoos instead of ear gauges, facial piercings, and garish hair in a pathetic attempt to make themselves feel unique despite that poor taste in Hot Topic rock. There is nothing especially metal at all about the music these groups play as it is not riff based, it is hook based. This stuff inherently cannot be metal by definition. Motorhead is musically closer to black metal than White Death and Sargeist. These Finnish scenesters play more of the same old crap that’s on the radio with a harsher production and meaningless (for the melodic progression of the songs) pastiches of actual metal bands. Rounding them up and using them as target practice would make for an excellent gladiatorial blood sacrifice diis manibus.

Tags: black 'n roll, Finland, hells headbangers, metalcore, NWN/FMP, review, scenesters, werewolf records, white death