Black Mold: Tales of Degradation (2019)

Here is another demo that I picked up from Hell D Productions.  The label has something of a fixation on bands who combine black metal with crust or punk or thrash metal.  Black Mold is not an exception with their own thrashy, punky take on black metal.

This is a very short four-song demo with none of the songs breaking the five minute mark.  The riffs are heavily-laden with bass and there is a raw and primal energy to each of the songs.  Black Mold is not full of the most competent of musicians as most of the music is fairly simple and straightforward, but their rawness is what is most appealing about them.  This is absolutely filthy and dirty music played with a youthful cockiness and a fuck you attitude.  The vocals are typically shouted, going along with the heavy punk influence. 

Most of the songs carry along at about the same pace, meaning there is not much variety here.  And looking for melody is a completely lost cause.  Black Mold is at their best when they are just tearing shit apart, and that is what they do on each of these songs.

This is by no means an essential release.  It is a demo of a young band.  But their energy is intriguing enough for me to keep an eye on them. 

Inquisitor: Dungeons of Fear (2016)

Inquisitor's label still sends me promos on occasion, but I do not recall whether they sent me anything by Inquisitor since their split with Decayed and Irae.  I was not even completely sure the band still existed until I recently placed an order with the label, Hell D Productions.  I saw this demo from 2016 there and decided to grab it since I always liked Inquisitor's take on thrash metal.

Well, we are still waiting on a full-length from Inquisitor.  This is their most recent release and it is just a four-song demo.  Granted, it is a fast and dirty four-song demo and that is typical of the band, but it would be nice to get a full-length.

Inquisitor's sound is blackened thrash/speed metal very similar to a number of South American bands.  This becomes more obvious with the track "Anjo Exterminador", which is a cover originally done by a Brazilian band called Flageladör.  The riffs are fast-paced and there are frequently soaring guitar solos played over the top of the riffs, giving the release some very impressive melody.  The blackened element comes more from the vocals, which are delivered in a typical black metal rasp. 

Inquisitor would fit in well on a playlist with groups like Witchtrap, Victimizer and Atomizer.  The music is aggressive and fast, but with a lot of melody.  I am still waiting for that full-length.

Nethermancy: Magick Halls of Ascension (2017)

Black metal has become such a varied beast over the years.  Other genres have seeped their influence into bands.  Regional styles have popped up.  There is just very little that sounds like the more known sounds of the early 1990's in Norway, which in itself was really the second wave of black metal.  There are certain styles of black metal that appeal to me, and certain styles that do not.  I generally prefer bands whose sound is based in thrash metal riffs with hateful-sounding vocals.  And luckily, Nethermancy is exactly that type of black metal band.

Nethermancy's sound is based in the old school.  It is the kind of black metal sound you would expect to hear from Norway in the early 1990's, with a little bit of early 90's Swedish black metal thrown in for good measure.  The riffs are tremolo-picked, repetitive riffs, played over blast-beat driven drums, with the occasional keyboard flourish.  The vocals are delivered in a throaty rasp.  If I had to pick one band to refer to for a point of reference, it would be the most aggressive stuff from Ancient.  The lyrics deal mostly with occult mysticism, similar to the works of Absu or the black metal output of Satan's Host.

This album manages to hit all of the right notes for me for a black metal album.  It is fast, aggressive, and intense.  The lyrics are dark, the vocals are definitely hateful.  The fact that this band came from Portugal and not Scandinavia is shocking.  It is less surprising to know that the band has been together since the mid 90's.  Their style definitely suggests they probably date back to that time period.  This is a very good, old school style black metal album.  I highly recommend it to anyone looking for black metal the way it used to be.

Decayed: The Burning of Heaven (2016)

Yep, very subtle.  We can definitely tell the opinions on Christianity held by the band due to the album title and the cover art here.  I kid, mostly because I find it very funny.  The Portuguese black metal pioneers Decayed has been around since the early 1990's, which is a very long time.  This is the first I have personally heard from them though, mostly due to Portugal not really being known for its metal.  Only vocalist/guitarist J.A. has been with the band since the beginning with the other members joining on within the last few years.

With a black metal band that has been around for as long as Decayed has, it is no surprise to hear that their style is rooted in the far more aggressive, hateful styles of the second wave bands from Norway and Sweden.  The thrash and punk influences are obvious from the riffing style, which is mostly simple and repetitive.  The album as a whole is dirty and raw black metal.  I certainly have no complaints about that, as I have frequently discussed my preference for this particular style of black metal.  The vocals are a fairly typical rasp, but not so much that the lyrics are not easily heard or understood.  The production is nice and crisp, which is something of a rarity in black metal, but which helps to really hear the instrumentation.

This is definitely not a retread of Transilvanian Hunger, despite the comments earlier about simple riffing style.  It is much more similar to later Darkthrone.  Some of the songs are quite lengthy with more progressive structures.  The band does not simply rely on one riff over and over again for each song.  In fact, the album does seem to be more of a concept album, with a couple of short interludes among the tracks.

This is a raw, dirty, thrashing black metal album.  It is exactly the type of black metal I love.  I love this album.

Metal Briefs: HellDProd Splits

Over the last several months I have gotten a number of stuff sent to me from the label HellDProd.  Since most of these are short demos or two-song splits, and older, I figured I would throw them all together in one post.

AUGRIMMER/GRAVE DESECRATOR: BLOODY DEATHCROSS (2013)
This is a two song split between German black metallers Augrimmer and Brazilian blackened death metal band Grave Desecrator.  I was previously familiar with Grave Desecrator and own their 2010 full-length.  Augrimmer was new to me.

Augrimmer's contribution to this is the track "This is How You Do It (With the Devil)".  I doubt it has anything to do with the Montell Jordan track "This is How We Do It", which was popular when I was in junior high.  Instead it appears to be a Darkthrone-esque track, mixing simple black metal with a little bit of a traditional metal flair and some impressive soloing.  The production value was actually a lot better than I thought I was going to get.  I was actually pretty surprised by how much I enjoyed this track.

Grave Desecrator, on the other hand, stick to their really raw and murky production values and their downright filthy blackened death style that is clearly influenced by the South American pioneers of their scene, Sarcofago and Morbid Visions-era Sepultura.  Grave Desecrator is not re-inventing the wheel here.  But I love the dirty style.

Both tracks on this release are impressive, but this split is not a necessity because it is just one song from each band.  It does make me want to check out Augrimmer, and would do the same if I was not already familiar with Grave Desecrator.  I guess that is the purpose behind these.

DECAYED/IRAE/INQUISITOR: FROM THE UNDERWORLD WITH HATE (2013)
This is a much more worthy split.  Here we have a three-way split with each band having between four and seven songs.  On this one, the only band I was previously familiar with is Inquisitor who had been sent to me previously by the label for their two-song EP Dark Ages of Witchery.

Decayed is first up.  They are a Portuguese black metal band that has apparently been around since 1990 and put out a large number of demos, EPs, and splits during that time.  They have also had nine full-length releases.  I had never heard of them before.  This is fairly lo-fi black metal, but it is thrashy and hateful, just the way I like my black metal.  There is absolutely nothing pretty about any of the sound here, this is just straightforward dark and dirty black metal.  The vocals are impressive with a kind of echo effect that gives off the feeling of a demonic voice.

Irae is another Portuguese black metal band that has been just as productive in releasing material, though Irae has not been around as long.  Irae is a one-man band in which sole member Vulturius performs all of the instruments.  Irae sounds like you would expect from a one-man black metal band, raw and cold, yet fairly simplistic.  What is surprising is that the production values on this are pretty decent, which is somewhat rare for one-man black metal.  Irae also is significantly more dynamic than a lot of one-man black metal bands.

Inquisitor stands out a little bit on this split.  Not a black metal band, Inquisitor plays more of a thrash/speed metal style.  So the last third of the split is significantly faster and lighter than the previous two-thirds.  Even more surprising is the fact that the thrash metal band seemed to have the worst production of the three.  But I enjoyed Inquisitor on their EP and I enjoy them now.  They sound a little like Skeletonwitch in that it is an impressive style of blackened thrash metal with a lot of speed and intensity.

This is a much more worthy split and all three bands are impressive in their own ways.  I still prefer Inquisitor, but Irae and Decayed both impressed me.

Womb/Hellcharge: This Knot...

I was recently sent this review request from HellDProd, or something like that, I am not really sure.  This small label has been sending me some really underground recordings for a little while now.  This is really raw stuff, stuff that most people have probably never heard of, but it is always fun to discover some deep underground material.

This is a split of a couple of black metal bands from Portugal.  It was released on Valentine's Day this year, making someone a very nice Valentine's Day present, I am sure.  I assume that this split is available only on cassette.

Womb is up first and they have a very punkish sound to their black metal, bearing more similarity to the early days of Venom, Sarcofago, and Sodom than to anything released under the black metal genre today.  It is all nasty and raw.  Utterly filthy stuff.  The songs are all very short and typically only feature one riff.  The Womb side consists of four tracks and less than eight minutes of music.  Short and not very sweet.

Next up is Hellcharge.  As low as the production values on the Womb side were, this is even lower.  The guitar can barely be heard and the vocals are even murkier.  The drums are about the only thing that can be heard that well at all.  That is a shame because I think Hellcharge's songs are a little more interesting.  I just wish I could actually hear them.  Hellcharge also has a big punk feel to the riffs and vocals.

Not a bad split.  Definitely geared more towards the ultra lo-fi black metal fans who like a hearty helping of punk in their sound.

Reader Submissions: Inquisitor: Dark Ages of Witchery

I love it when a band comes out of nowhere to blow me away with a release.  Enter Portugal's Inquisitor.  They have only been around for a few years now and have yet to release a full-length.  Thus far their entire discography consists of a demo, this 7" EP, and a split with Virgin Killer.  But if this EP is any indication, Inquisitor should have a bright future.

Inquisitor is a thrash/speed metal band with a sound firmly rooted in the 1980's.  Their music strongly resembles bands that straddled the line between thrash metal and more melodic styles.  Names like Flotsam and Jetsam, Exciter, and Razor come to mind.  The vocals are done in more of an early extreme thrash metal style, most similar to Teutonic thrash masters Destruction, Kreator, and Sodom.  The riffs are fast-paced and memorable and the band possesses some impressive songwriting chops.

The production on this sounds great.  The sound is beefy and muscular, which befits the style of music.  There is a heavy bottom-end which is sometimes missing in more traditionally-minded metal albums.  Everything is clear without sounding sterile.

This is an extremely impressive release, but it is just a teaser.  There are only two tracks here and they both sound very good.  I am looking forward to something longer.

Reader Submissions: Mystical: Demo I

One of the results of our current technology-dominated society is that just about anyone can now make music.  And it is much easier to get music out to people as well.  I do not mean to start this out on a negative note, but it is fairly clear from the quality of this release that the members of Portuguese black metal band Mystical are fairly new to the game.  A cursory glance at the members' respective backgrounds would confirm this, beyond guitarist BHJS.  But this is just a demo, so it is hard to be too hard on the guys.

The big complaint that I have here is that it sounds too synthetic.  The drums are programmed, the keyboards sound a little bit too sterile, and the samples are an odd choice.  The only real instrument is the guitar which simply plays some basic black metal riff, usually just one or two riffs per song.  It is hard to achieve a good black metal atmosphere when the instruments do not sound real.  The music is fairly simple and direct.  The songs are all very short as well and rely on a couple of ideas per song.

There are a couple of silver linings for this band, glimmers of hope that could be improved on and result in a decent next recording.  "Eternal Damnation" is a pretty decent song, with some interesting riffs and a decent sound, despite the overly-programmed drumming.  A couple of the other tracks also have the hint of some good ideas present, such as the keyboard-driven break in "Torture of the Damned" and the riffs in "The Cursed Earth".  In addition, the vocals, despite being stereotypical for black metal, do sound pretty good.

When all is said and done, this is a demo.  It is hard to have high expectations and it is hard to be disappointed.  There are some things that Mystical could do to improve, but that is typical for bands on their first demo.  There is room for growth.  It will be interesting to see where they go from here.