Can a horde be just 2 people? Well if they make a racket like this band I think saying “no” would be a moot point and rest assured this album is certainly barbaric. Hailing from Lisbon Portugal these anonymous “gasmask perpetrators” have a debut album here following up from a couple of well-received demos in 2016-17 and have made clear their intent is pretty much to destroy everything in their path. Taking a leaf out the Canadian Ross Bay Culters this work of Blasphemy is too tough to simply be flagged as death or black but is pretty much War Metal violence all the way through. Bludgeoning across 8 tracks in a mean and lean 28-minute running time, it’s like bashing your head repeatedly into the nearest brick wall and hoping you can keep up with the pain without knocking yourself clean out.

This self- described ‘Putrid Miasma’ which the hardiest might class as “music” starts with ‘Tyrant Of The Dark Trinity’ and the warped sound of what could be a Tardis landing amidst what turns out to be a pitched battle between Daleks and Cybermen forces. An ugly guttural roar hones out of this noise, drums clatter and thud and vile sounding wasps caught-in-a-jar schisms are savagely wrought out from the ‘superior’ sounding guitar work; I guess these could be the axes the duo are referring to. You probably know exactly how this is going to go down if this is the sort of music you can stomach and enjoy listening to. Lyrics deal with inseminating holy whores, putrid demons from hell, nuclear holocausts and sadistic bestial death so that’s hardly a surprise. Yes, I got a CD of this with lyrics included otherwise these would hardly have been deciphered. I have visions of the vocalist hammering the drums and yelling whilst their compatriot in goat menacing flagellates his strings with blood dripping down the neck of his instrument; true Profanatica style at work basically.

Don’t be expecting a huge amount of diversification between tracks as they continue to plunder their instruments. One attack swiftly follows another as they continue to get their Revenge on humanity and pray for its destruction. There’s the occasional flailing scale charge down the strings and the grimy production suits things well. Its clear enough to have everything pretty much distinguishable in the mix but not surprisingly it was apparently recorded in a goat dungeon. Things slow a bit to a fuzzy doom-laden rumble on 3rd track ‘Venomous Infernal Carnage’ but not for long as the rancid vocals spew their vile disgust and drums bounce upon the skulls of the slain. Aah what delightful nerve-shredding carnage!

As we are forced in supplication to ‘Bow Beneath The Altar Of Satan’ things reach a fever-pitch, necks are wrung, sharp daggers rip flesh and guts are pulled out and thrown around with delirious glee; well at least the musical equivalent of such dark rites. As far as the title track is concerned has the 3-minute pounder got an essence of groove about it? Possibly, although the jury’s kind of out on that? It has got a gnarly slithering and slimy sharp guitar lick flailing out of the scathing welter of instrument abuse these elements giving it a slight definition as does the sluggish limbering up to the volatile spew of ‘Storms Of Primitive Violence’

So possibly not going to set the world on fire via originality but this certainly heralds world destruction on every other level and presents Barbaric Hordes as new billie-goat bullying-bleaters to the loafing shed; what more could you really ask for?

(7/10 Pete Woods)

https://godzovwarproductions.bandcamp.com/album/axe-of-superior-savagery