Band:	Crematory
Album:	Oblivion
Style:	Gothic metal
Release date:	April 13, 2018
A review by:	nikarg

01. Expectation
02. Salvation
03. Ghost Of The Past
04. Until The Dawn
05. Revenge Is Mine
06. Wrong Side
07. Stay With Me
08. For All Of Us
09. Immortal
10. Oblivion
11. Cemetary Stillness
12. Blessed
13. Demon Inside

"Please welcome Crematory."

This is how the Germans begin their 14th studio album, a release that has had more media coverage than any other in their entire career, unfortunately for all the wrong reasons.

I find it really hard to understand how a band expects that bashing the fans will turn out to be an effective tactic in order to convince them to support said band. The fact that the statement "fans get off your lazy asses" came from lazy-ass-looking drummer Markus Jüllich added an extra ironic layer to a career decision that has already attained legendary status as one of the most epic marketing failures. Metal fans and journalists had a field day at the expense of Crematory on social media and planet internet in general, after the lengthy, whining statement was posted on Facebook.

To be honest I am writing this review because I think most people will not even bother to listen to Oblivion after all that mess and I think this is unfair to the music. Or is it?

It was with disbelief that I saw the official video of "Salvation" a week after the events mentioned earlier. Dark-techno keyboards, harsh-ish vocals for the verses, clean vocals for the chorus with some extra cheese, weak riffs and watered down electric guitars, everything sounded and looked painfully bad, but somehow I found myself going back to it more often than I should or wanted to. Was it its Eurovision-esque, ultra-kitsch aesthetic and catchiness that rendered me unable to resist it?

A few weeks later "Cemetery Stillness" came to light with similar song structure and feel as the first single. The video, consisting of the silly lyrics in white Arial font over screenshots from the dreadful "Salvation" video with cringe-worthy poses by the band members, floored me. I immediately thought that Crematory must be really strapped for cash to release such a visual atrocity. The music, lyrics and visuals could have been the work of a 10-year-old with a 50-dollar budget.

Facepalms all over.

If you are familiar with these two songs already released, then you have a good idea of what the album is like. It is the European counterpart of Babymetal in the ridiculousness scale, a gothic/ebm/industrial/synthpop metal mix of Rammstein, Evanescence with a sore throat and Savage Garden, aiming to give old metalheads, who have stopped listening to metal a long time ago, some kind of blast from the past, but in a small, manageable dosage. The problem is that the majority of this crowd neither goes to gigs nor buys CDs and vinyls, so the most Crematory can hope for is a few YouTube views I'm afraid.

Oblivion is for music what The Room (the one with Tommy Wiseau of course) is for cinematography. It is so bad, it's good and I can picture it achieving similar cult status. If white socks with sandals could turn into music, it would sound like this. I cannot rate this album; I love it and hate it at the same time.

P.S. While this review was being written the band released a video for "Immortal", filmed in the same building and with the same concept as the other two singles; the only difference is its sepia colour. All I can say is that I am willing to pay so that Crematory can release a video for each and every song of this album.