Waltari - Yeah! Yeah! Die! Die! - Death Metal Symphony in Deep C (1996) - No! No! Stop! Stop! - Random genre mix ahead - 35% (06/02/15)

No, this release isn't as innovative as many experts and fans claim. The stupidly entitled "Yeah! Yeah! Die! Die! Death Metal Symphony in Deep C" with an abysmal cover that makes Iron Maiden's Ed Hunter artwork look like a brilliant piece of art is a mediocre collection of opposing genres squeezed into one single record. The different genres are rarely fusioned and mostly stand apart. When they get mixed once in a while, they rarely harmonize. Waltari didn't really try out anything completely new either as bands such as Phlebotomized and Therion were also already mixing classical music and extreme metal elements back in the days in a much better way.

The overlong opener "Misty Dreariness" doesn't feature any rock or metal elements and is basically an elegiac piece of classical music plodding on for almost eight abominable minutes. As if that wasn't enough, the middle part of this album features a slow paced classical music instrumental entitled "Completely Alone" that even breaks the twelve minute mark. It's not because a track is long that it means it's experimental, intellectual or progressive. Now, don't get me wrong, I admire classical music and listen to everything from Bach and Beethoven over Wagner and Tchaikovsky to Orff and Varèse. There is great and inspired classical music and there is pseudo-intellectually plodding classical music. This here is definitely the second category. It gets much worse though as "Move" is a horrible mixture of female operatic vocals and male rap passages while the instruments play a really odd mixture of highly repetitive classical music with some scratching. A wannabe Montserrat Caballé meets a wannabe Chuck D in a nu metal prototype that makes even the worst Limp Bizkit song sound clever. The suffering doesn't end here for the listeners as the band closes the regular version of this release with "The Top". That is rather the bottom of this record. We get to hear uninspired classical music featuring technoid elements that actually sound like a mixture of cringeworthy Eurodance elements and dumb Darkwave sounds somewhere between DJ Bobo and Das Ich. Those who are complaining about Morbid Angel's Illud Divinum Insanus should actually listen to this track and will realize that the experimental fusion of metal and Darkwave can sound much worse than they might have thought before.

Where is the metal music in here? About one third or a little bit less of this release is actually death metal music. It sounds like a badly recorded mixture of early Atrocity and early Therion. Most of these parts are just brutal and fast but there are also a few slower and almost doom metal inspired parts. The latter parts sometimes harmonize with the classical music while the faster passages contrast this kind of music. Contrasting elements can work well if they are employed in a clever manner but Waltari keeps repeating the same song writing ideas all the time and after one or two initial surprises, the clash of genres just sounds odd and predictable. 

Now, why doesn't that release get an ever lower rating? A few songs actually manage to mix death metal elements and classical music in an interesting way like the well elaborated "A Sign", the chaotically experimental yet strangely coherent and fascinating "Deeper Into the Mud" and the mostly pitiless and fast paced short neck-breaker "The Struggle for Life and Death of Knowledge". These three songs stand out among the five abysmal potpourris and the pointless hidden bonus track. I must also admit that I'm impressed that Waltari and their partners in crime really had the courage to release this oddball of an album to the masses. 

In the end, this release is only interesting for those who are looking for an unusual listening experience that is experimental at all costs. If you actually want to listen to an elegant, energizing and progressive fusion of classical music and metal music, you should obviously choose Therion's records over this oddity.