Metal Underground.com

The avant-garde style of metal is all about throwing the standard conventions out the window and doing something unique without being constrained by what’s expected from an audience. In many cases this leads to stunning arrangements and unheard of compositions that remind people why they listen to metal and ditch mainstream music in the first place. Vampillia’s “Rule the World/Deathtiny Land” is absolutely not one of those cases. Rather than actually pushing any boundaries or coming up with new ways to combine different styles, Vampilia has crammed together a series of disconnected pieces that don’t fit.

“Rule the World/Deathtiny Land” is simply an album of short interludes that should connect other pieces of music, but don't. Calling it an “album” may actually be overly generous, with most of the tracks being only a minute long and several only lasting mere seconds. The disc opens with three piano interludes in a row, which don’t really belong together and feel like they were all yanked from various tracks on a lost symphonic black metal album somewhere.

The entire duration plays out in a similar manner, with short bursts of metal, sudden bouts of violins, or random weird sounds meant to create an avant-garde atmosphere, but none of it is even remotely connected. Attaching four or five of these bizarre interludes together and arranging them into a coherent unit probably would have made a great song, but the band didn’t even bother to try. It’s a shame too, because some of the ideas would work very well together in real songs, instead of mindless snippets. The off-kilter violin segments and many piano sections could sound fantastic with some of the black metal mayhem, but they almost never get put together.

Vampillia’s scattered nature may have something to do with the fact that band consists of 11 musicians. Without a doubt, the end result is definitely an instance of there being too many cooks in the kitchen and too many hands in the cookie jar. The sad thing is that many will likely be pressured into giving the music the highest accolades so they don’t appear to be “not getting” it. Unfortunately, there’s nothing to get. This 24 track flop is just plain poorly arranged music.

The song titles are supposed to reflect the story of a man who conquers the world, kills everyone, and then builds a theme park. Many of the naming conventions used end up being unintentionally humorous, as the titles describe the overall music better than they know. Names like “Well, have time to play around for fun,” “I’m completely lost here now,” and “This is totally empty feeling” take on whole new meanings after actually listening to all the songs.

Simply put, “Rule the World/Deathtiny Land” is a hundred decent to even occasionally great ideas that Vampillia couldn’t or wouldn’t fit together, so they all got thrown into their own brief tracks that lead to one big mess. It’s not “avant-garde” or “progressive” - it’s just scattered. From Oblomov to Unexpect to Peccatum and a variety of bands in between, plenty of acts have managed to make full songs that use vastly different sounds without having to break each stylistic change into its own minute long song. When Vampillia figures out how to arrange different ideas together, the band might make something well worth hearing, but until then the music can’t be recommended to fans of avant-garde metal.