The rating above represents the average score of the 0.0 that Triumphant earns for whatever Pitchfork attempts to assess (originality, artistry, musicianship, credigree?) and the 10.0 that Triumphant earns as a novelty-metal classic putting its genre's satirists to shame. (Why did Spinal Tap and Satanicide bother, when this stuff's already self-consciously a caricature to the point of being spoofproof?)

What a crack-up the packaging is. The band logo is metallic, "held on" by Phillips-head screws. The front and back cover art feature an axe-, sword-, and shield-wielding whitey in a skull-belt and bat-helmet chopping up dark-skinned apelike savages in order to protect his pale women, intimidatingly proportioned cowerers "in" ill-advised (transparent) thongs...

The Medieval Times-caliber accents in the skits are hilarious. The first two songs borrow from rap's brand-building tactic of saying the rapper's name over and over; Thor skillfully celebrates his Thorness ("I Am Thor" is self-explanatory, while "March to Glory" chants "Thor is war, and war is Thor" though "glory" and "whore" might be in there somewhere). Thor's three favorite words are "steel," "thunder," and "tundra," though he's always searching for priapic "sceptres" and "hammers." He says that "anger is my middle name" on "Anger III", which is confusing, since we know his middle name to be Mikl, unless we are to accept him as his one-word stage-name. Meanwhile, "Thunderhawk", seriously about being a thunderhawk, is fall-down funny.