Lista de Bandas Black Metal Happy Days A World of Pain

Potential is such a vague and abstract term, way too often people use it to describe bad music when they’re too generous to say flat out that it sucks. You could attach the word onto anything and make it work, is there potential I could be the next Prime minister? Sure, just not a very big one. I really think people should refrain from using the word when describing bad music and treat it just like they do other bad music. Doubtless, many people defending Happy Days are the same people who are quick to mock anything metalcore or deathcore related; therefore I’m stumped as to why this band gets defended so much. A World of Pain is a bad album, really bad, saying this has potential is pretty obvious, you’ll see it bloom over the next few releases. But saying this album is good based solely on the potential to be something more is pure idiocy, A World of Pain is bad, there’s no hiding from it. You can marinate over potential and the agenda of the musicians behind it, but there’s no denying the fact that this sucks hard.

Depressive black metal is a genre that unfortunately has a large failure rate, many bands often fail to express the emotions through their music and more often than not the music implodes in on itself. Granted, several worthwhile acts have come out of the scene, with bands such as Hypothermia and Trist sporting respectable reputations. However, for every good act, there’s about a dozen or so bands making a mockery of the entire genre. On A World of Pain, Happy Days is one of these releases. Really, I’m struggling to see how anyone can find anything to praise about this. The production is horrific, rendering most tracks unlistenable due to the painfully thin guitar tone. It’s like a dentist drill, thin, sharp and buzzing, it begins to grate on my nerves as it just sounds so weak. They don’t carry any emotional weight, they don’t play anything interesting or atmospheric, they’re just not very good. Although, the occasional acoustic interlude is tolerable at best, mainly due to the fact that it’s more audible, it still doesn’t compliment the music well, often feeling awkward and disjointed. The riffs themselves are incredibly simple and minimalistic, only a few minor chord notes repeated into oblivion, pretty simple stuff but it doesn’t work for them. It’s the production really, that makes the music so bad, it buries whatever good moments could be found here with an unbearable layer of static white noise.

Vocally, Happy Days have always suffered. Whilst the mid pitched rasp is tolerable, it’s when Morbid tries to recreate the howl of despair that the whole vision of the music becomes lost and it degenerates into a parody of the genre. I don’t know what Morbid aims to invoke with these ludicrous cries other than giggles in his direction. The vocals aren’t helped by the fact that they’re pushed too far within the mix, they obliterate every instrument underneath them, completely drowning out any semblance of “potential” that could be buried deep. The vocals also have this annoying tendency to constantly shift in volume, along with the rest of the music as a matter of fact. It sounds like different recording equipment was used for each song, terrible recording equipment I might add. Songs constantly fade in and out, one second it might be painfully loud and the next it might be ridiculously quiet. It’s painfully amateurish and unprofessional, although I respect that they are two teenagers without access to decent recording equipment, bad music is bad music no matter how you look at it. Perhaps Happy Days should have maybe earned some money to get some decent recording equipment, just a suggestion.

Whilst I appreciate these are basically two kids making black metal, there’s a lot that needs to be done. Everything has to start somewhere, unfortunately Happy Days started off on shaky footing. Musically, this is the prototype for later Happy Days material, with gloomy yet melodic guitar lines juxtaposed with the occasional use of acoustic guitars. If you want to see how Happy Days started off then this might be worth a look, but they’ve come so far from their humble beginnings that listening to this and the demo that followed is pointless.