30 minutes of bestial barbarity here from Portughell. Helmed by Reverend of the Hell Legions and Macabre Tyranny on bass and guitar and Reverend of Diabolical Services and Sinister Sorcery drums and vokills, you pretty much know what you are up for here. That’s just as well as internet presence is not something readily available even if releases are frequent. This dastardly duo have disgusted the underground with 3 previous albums to this one along with EP’s demo’s a live album and a plethora of splits. Most are probably limited edition and now sold out and this follows the course being available in just 500 copies.
After some sinister sounds first track ‘Stench Of Morbid Practices’ batters in and clatters and clashes away in a calamitous and cantankerous fashion and things pretty much carry on in that way until the end of the album. The drumming is quite at the fore here and the snares clash and ring in the ears as the beast behind the kit growls and hollers away. Guitars and bass manage to keep up snarling along to the sound which is abrasive and primitive in the extreme. Think along the likes of Blasphemy and Archgoat as this unholy racket flies off the handle sounding like its intent on smashing everything around it to pieces. Yep it could be described as ‘bullish in a china shop black metal with an essence of the goat’ about it. Whatever way you look at it the musical stench it exudes is a very violent and foul one. A grinding groove tightly punishes and wraps itself around ‘Slaves Carrying the Bier of Satan.’ Everything else thwacks around it and the vocals gargle and growl driving the furious funeral into a bloodlust of depravity.
To be fair there isn’t a massive stylistic shift going to occur over the five original compositions here, Satanize simply set out to batter the listener senseless and do it in no uncertain terms. It sounds as though the pair just went into a rehearsal room and just let rip, the brash production behind it giving this quite a powerful and thick cloying sound. After having dragged you through the fire and brimstone of their tracks there is a cover of Black Witchery’s ‘Holocaustic Church Devastation’ proving they can if anything hit things even harder and pick up the speed a bit more. This one may not offer any real surprises but won’t sell any uncompromising black metal maniax short at all. The cover art is particularly striking too and looks like it probably took a longer to create than the music itself!
(6.5/10 Pete Woods)
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