Raw Swedish black metal here with little in the way of finesse and absolutely no screwing around as this band inject their debut album chock full of ten songs in a “blink and you’ll miss them” 25 minutes. There’s absolutely nothing much in the way of any official web presence about this lot in fact their sound is so primitive it gives you the feeling that it pre-dates even paper and pencil but that’s the charm as it unleashes that first chainsaw sounding riff and grooves into some rot n’ rolling punk edged nastiness. ‘Come Fire, Come Flame’ gurgles the singer and you want to immediately neck loads of strong booze and stumble around in time to the lumbering music as this literally drives you into an alcoholocaust
Apparently there’s an ex Hypothermia, Lifelover and IxxI member involved here somewhere but there is nothing about his more depressive former bands about songs like ‘War Without End’ which deliriously charge around with destructive force and elongated roars and barks from vocalist J.L. The guitar tones here are particularly impressive as they have a nice razor sharpness about them and just listening makes them come close enough to almost cut you. There’s a sense of melody about the attack too although it’s a forceful one that incessantly drives into you stabbing away rather than creeping up on you in the slightest. ‘Bone-Bleaching Sun’ one of the albums longer songs is particularly impressive in this respect taking us back to an age when bands like Marduk were just thinking about releasing their first demo material.
There’s plenty of spirit and suitable spite about this short sharp attack and its simplicity really wins you over. The barbed weave of songs like ‘I Am’ is pretty remorseless and comes at you in a fast and furious raging fashion. This is definitely a case of sitting on the punk side of black metal at times too and if you take in ‘Black Star’ it’s akin to a particularly nasty fight to the death after taking laxative party between GG. Allin, Motorhead and Taake. If you are looking for something complicated or reinvention of round things you won’t find it here. If you want something to head bang along to, neck back spirits and party till you puke, this will do nicely!
(7/10 Pete Woods)
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