Review by Allan on June 12, 2002.

All hail generic death metal and ultra long album titles! Tottenkorps’ “Tharnheim: Athi-Land-Nhi, Cyclopean Crypts of Citadels” is one painstaking journey into the depths of bad death metal. For Christ’s sake, where do these generic death metal bands keep coming from? They’re everywhere and they are pissing me off! The only good thing about them is that they make stand out’s like Nile look good (which they are). Tottenkorps failed me from the first track to the last.

Before I get to the bad side of the music, let me tell you all the good things that a one-fingered monkey could name. There are a few parts somewhere in this album that aren’t terrible, and if the band wrote parts that were as good as those, then maybe Tottenkorps would become worthy of a more than rare listen. Some of those parts were seriously powerful and well done, but I’m afraid they were few and far between. Ok, maybe the monkey has more than one finger. The musicianship wasn’t bad at all. I was glad that the drummer wasn’t as terrible as Pessemist’s. While he did abuse his double bass privileges every so often, he was quite interesting at times. The guitars were quite good too. When the band pulled out the solos, they were pretty awesome and the leads weren’t bad half the time. That’s where it stops though!

What Tottenkorps truly lack is a good sense of self and creativity. They’ve got enough musicianship to handle their ideas, so why they don’t take advantage of that is beyond me. Maybe they just lack the brains to be innovative, but I don’t think that’s the case since some of their ideas really shine through the music. The first destructive element is – the vocalist. Undistinguishable death grunts are all over this album. A bit more clarity in his style would be much appreciated, but that’s not where the real problem lies. The vocals lack power and presence, thus making them void of any credibility. Another problem is that as I said earlier, there is too much variation between good parts and bad parts. They might as well of cut out all the good parts, which is a little less than half a song, and kept them to construct a better song. In the end, I have to say that the band is far too generic to stay interesting.

Bottom Line: Listen to one track and you’ve heard the album. The world wouldn’t be missing anything if Tottenkorps weren’t around.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Originality: 3
Musicianship: 6
Atmosphere: 3
Production: 6
Overall: 3

Rating: 4.2 out of 10