Review by Denis on November 27, 2002.

I don't know what's going on nowadays with the black metal scene but the more I find out about it, the more I discover stuff that I like. Now with this new band, I'm thrilled once more with something totally different. This is far from old school but rather a new musical direction. It mixes up elements of industrial with a black metal structure and the end result is highly consumable to my musically oriented ears.

A band with a strange name built around a Norwegian elite corp. The guitarist and drummer are both from Mayhem. Red Harvest is the current band of the keyboard player. This CD is made of four songs but I whish it would be actually a full length. Another thing that is too bad is that maybe there won't be another recording from them since this is more like a special/side project. Too bad. One can only hope for more in the future.

Here's a track-by-track brief description.

‘Fever Zauben’ has sirens sounds for an intro, then some machine gun black metal, and war samplings. The beat is very fast, complex but melodic even if it is highly technical. Lots of guitars tracks that ends with war sampling.

‘Unter Der Fahne’ begins with marching army, then drum roll. The next thing you know, the exciting guitar riffs rolls on with some keyboards notes. This song is some kind of a battle hymn changing to industrial/psychedelic with vocal effects to become in the end very Avant-garde with a drum solo and great precise guitar riffs.

‘Die Nacht Hat Augen’ starts with plane sampling then arise tornado-like riffs, stopping for a more Avant-garde passage made of strong bass, samplings, keys and spoken words. These two genres appear in alternance to finally end up to a much calmer mode with spacey keys sounding like a submarine sonar. A very thrilling composition.

‘Weltherrschaft’, this one comes in with spacey key work and machine gun rhythmic with broken beat. The guitar is being played with metered interruptions. The beat slows down gradually until a stop then only some psychedelic sounds completed the piece.

Bottom Line: "Weltherschaft" could be translated in English by "another post black metal adventure that has not being developed to its full length".

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 9
Atmosphere: 9
Originality: 9.5
Production: 9.5
Overall: 9

Rating: 9.2 out of 10

Review by JD on November 25, 2012.

With a name like Last Beautiful June on an album I was going to be reviewing I was expecting some sort of Prog Rock/Metal band with some very strange ambiance going on in its musical shell. Fuck was I wrong!! This German band I think picked the wrong moniker for its act.

Post Punk meets Screamo/Mathcore with shadings of Metal tagged into the whole thing. LBJ seems to be a hastily conceived patchwork of different extremes of music that just never come together. Horrid guitar work that a first year student could do without a second thought, very predictable and dull songwriting, questionable recording practices and a singer that sounds like a chainsaw cutting through a pig. I have found a band that is pretty bad.

I listened to every last second of this album - doing it three times like I do with all albums I review - and I came up with the same thing. I wondered how this band got this far, offering up music that has no real direction, structure or sense of musicality to it, with members that seem to have no clue what they are doing. It is clusterfuck of nonsense and very badly played music.

I would rather choose to listen to ABBA for ten hours (this being my number one most hated band in the universe) than have to listen to this album one more time. Last Beautiful June needs to get into a better line of work here before real Punks and Metalheads kick their asses. Picking fly shit out of Pepper would be their best bet as a career choice, since no amount of music lessons would help.

This is my opinion... deal with it.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 2
Atmosphere: 1
Production: 1
Originality: 0
Overall: 1

Rating: 1.0 out of 10