One of the best people to do an email interview with has to be Dodsferd mainman Wrath. Generally, interrogations of the electronic kind are pretty sterile, like trying to get blood from a stone. Not with Wrath – he answers everything with an exclamation point, so no matter how banal the question, the response was worth it. Since 2009, the man has added actual human beings to the lineup, taking Dodsferd out of the one-man black metal derby, but into further relevance, which The Parasitic Survival of the Human Race should further aid and abet.
The album serves as a bit of a left-turn for the band, having dropped a lot of their sideways melodies and grim BM blasting. These elements made albums like 2007’s excellent Cursing Your Will to Live and 2009’s even better Suicide and the Rest of Your Kind Will Follow magnetic listens; a shard off all the ‘ole Norwegian BM chopping block (the band is from Greece), but injected with voluminous melodies and plenty of lyrical/vocal spite from Wrath. Now, the band has gone down the rocked-out BM route, akin to what Darkthrone were doing in the mid-00’s, just with more feral vocals and less tight arrangements.
And frankly, some of these songs feel pretty uniform, like opener “Breeding Chaos” and “Stupid Worthless Sheep.” The riffs don’t have the same channeled fury to them – they’re just BM rock composites, unfortunately. Sure, the slinky “Doubting Your Worth” has some diabolical swagger, and the cover of the Misfits’ “We Are 138” is neat, but one can’t help but pine for the Dodsferd of yesteryear. Goodness, what is the world coming to? “Pining for the Dodsferd of yesteryear?” Nostalgia + Dodsferd don’t match.