Matthew Kelly1001 Albums You Must Die Before You Hear
#84: Tougher Than Nails – Delusional Blasphemies Destroyed (2021)
MATT KELLY instantly regrets listening to an album that easily blows away previous front runners for worst album of the decade.
I used to think I was tougher than nails. Specifically my ears. This quest is a test of my musical might – where other listeners flee in terror I boldly stand my ground in the face of No Stockingz. Yet this album, this album right here, came close to reducing me to a puddle on the ground. An absolute endurance fest, getting through this even three times took me to the limit.
For though the top of the charts is a fickle mistress, so can it be with the bottom. Only days after I declared Diplopantics the worst thing yet included on this list, it has lost its crown. You see, Diplopantics may have had supernaturally incompetent production but IT HAD SOME PRODUCTION. This is a comically unrelenting stream of vocals that sound like Cookie Monster losing a screaming match with a wind tunnel, guitars and drums that appear to have been recorded AND TRACKED separately and mastered (if they even were, it sounds like it’s been mixed in real-time in Windows Media Player) with all the fidelity of Newt Gingrich. I can’t get over how bad some of this sounds – the guitar seems to gargle during the “solo” on ‘Whom Ye Shall Fear’, the same track on which he appears to attempt playing the drums on his bass, and when there is drumming it seems to be one continual fill. I genuinely don’t think the guitar is stringed or amped properly, or it’s untuned or whatever – everything is perpetually off.
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If you get to the end of this 50-minute nightmare, your reward is ‘Fought Until They Fell’ which is the same “What would blackened death metal be like if instead of playing blackened death metal we attached a firehouse to a diarrhoea-stricken elephant’s ass after giving it 24 red bulls and shot it right down the listener’s ear” stuff heard elsewhere. Except ‘Fought Until They Fell’ keeps being inexplicably and hilariously interrupted by a bizarre childish plinky plonky piano riff which gives me the giggles every time.
“What would blackened death metal be like if instead of playing blackened death metal we attached a firehouse to a diarrhoea-stricken elephant’s ass after giving it 24 red bulls and shot it right down the listener’s ear?”
Diplopantics were also saved by the fact that they didn’t appear to be reprehensible people. This guy though (name unknown – he did a Day Above Ground and deleted himself from the internet once this record gained infamy) has some VIEWS ABOUT THINGS. Now that’s okay; it is a central tenet of democracy that individuals be allowed to hold diverse views, even and especially ones that are philosophically opposed to yours.
As long as they do not endorse or extol violence or otherwise advocate for the infringement of – *aide whispers in my ear* What’s that? The cover (drawn with astounding competence given the not-fit-for-a-diaper-in-a-dumpster contents) depicts him killing people adorned with LGBT, Islamic and Planned Parenthood logos. Well fuck that guy then.
I’m told that the lyrics to this record are a bunch of hateful Christian extremist stuff aimed at various groups this follower of the way of peace and love can’t stop wishing death and suffering upon. I’ll take your word for it because I can’t make out a single fucking syllable of this racket as the vocalist appears to use Darth Vader and Alvin And The Chipmunks voice changers simultaneously while someone impersonates Yngwie Malmsteen using a jackhammer to play the strings in the background.
A mind-blowing and mordantly hilarious experience, I pronounce Delusional Blasphemies Destroyed a front-runner for the worst album of 2021 if not the decade so far and the most insufferable thing I’ve yet covered.
I’d tell him to fuck off, but he has, so let’s hope some lessons were learned.
