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.

Decayed: Ataque Infernal (2000)

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I would be covering my favorite Portuguese black metal band today.  Well, here it is.  I do not know a lot about Portuguese black metal, but it would appear that Decayed is one of the longest tenured, if not the very first such band.  Their first release was way back in 1990.

This is now the fifth release I have picked up by Decayed, and it is one of the earlier ones.  Their sound has always been incredibly raw and hateful, but it was particularly so on this one.  This is not a full-length album, it is essentially two small releases put together.  The first side is mostly new material, consisting of an intro, two short barn-burners and a longer track.  The second side is a collection of covers of clear influences for the band.  There are songs here originally released by Kreator, Violent Force, Bathory and Sodom. 

Decayed is a black metal band whose sound much more resembles a cross between early German thrash metal in the vein of the aforementioned Sodom and Kreator, Swedish black metal such as Marduk and Dark Funeral, and South American groups like Sarcofagó.  In other words, it is raw, ugly, relentless, hateful, crushing and evil.  There are not a lot of dynamic moments throughout the original material and it is over a little too quickly.  The covers are done quite well though. 

I do not want to give any sort of negative impression here, because I really do like it, as I do all of the stuff I have heard from the band to date.  It is simply that this is not a particularly essential release by the band (personally I prefer Into the Depths of Hell).  It is a nice short introduction of what to expect from the band.  Decayed has a massive discography and typically put out several releases a year, though they have slowed a bit lately.  Figuring out where to start is not an easy thing to do.  This is not a bad choice, but it would not be one of my recommendations. 

Wømb: Perceptions of Sightlessness (2013)

Last year, about this exact same time of year, I purchased the physical copy of a split that had been previously emailed to me by the record label for a review.  It was a split that I enjoyed and I decided to try to track down a physical copy of it.  Unfortunately, the seller indicated that he was having some difficulty in finding it and then never got back to me.  I got my money back, but not the split.  And so, I decided to keep my eyes open for the physical copy of the split, but purchase what I could of the two bands involved.  Several months ago, I picked up the Hellcharge demo.  And just recently, I received this demo by Portuguese black metal band Wømb.

Wømb is the much more raw and chaotic of the two bands featured on the This Knot... split.  Their sound has a lot of punk elements and call back to the early days when black metal was being formed out of speed, thrash, and punk.  The production is incredibly lo-fi and murky as hell, making it sometimes difficult to fully grasp what is being done musically.  But, let's be honest here, the band is really just making a lot of noise.  There is no real melodies, just riffs and pounding drums with shrieked vocals.  The songs are all very short, with one song just barely longer than three and a half minutes.  So that makes this a very quick and hostile listen.

There is not much information that I can find about Wømb.  Members are not named anywhere.  I get the impression there are two of them, based on very fuzzy pictures.  The band is fairly active releasing mostly demos and splits, no full-length releases.  It is not likely they are seeking fame of any sort based on all of this.

I think the Portuguese black metal scene is somewhat underrated personally.  I quite enjoy this band's chaotic take on black metal and I liked Hellcharge a bit too, though not quite as much.  My favorite band though will be looked at in the next post.

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.

Neoplasmah: Auguring the Dusk of a New Era (2014)

I'll be honest.  The cover art for this one threw me for a loop.  Based on the artwork of a man floating above a pool of water with multiple planets/moons in the background around him, I was thinking the music was going to be some kind of spacey progressive metal akin to Andromeda, Bal-Sagoth, and the like, or at the very least some overly technical metal wankery.  I was not expecting what turned out to be a death metal album.

To be fair, this is much more of a progressive death metal album in the vein of Mithras and Nocturnus.  The bass in particular reminds me very strongly of Nocturnus's classic The Key.  The science fiction theme, complicated song structures, otherworldly bass sound, and deep vocals combine into a cohesive sound that really does give off the feel of a sci-fi concept album. 

Each of the musicians is extremely gifted at their instruments.  The bass is definitely the star of the album but the drumming and lead guitars are also top-notch.  The drumming, while not as complicated as some progressive metal drummers (i.e. no polyrhythms and multiple time signatures) drives the music with its precision and intensity.  The lead guitar work provides a lot of the melody of the songs and can go from almost neoclassical shredding to dissonant chord progressions fairly quickly. 

The vocals of singer Sofia Silva are delivered in a raspy tone that calls to mind Sabina Classen of Holy Moses, who is one of my personal favorite female extreme metal vocalists, so I am on board.  There is not frequently a lot of dynamics to the vocals, but they nonetheless fit well with the urgency of the music.  On occasion the band utilizes clean backing vocals which provide a nice dichotomy to the otherwise more monotone vocal style.

One thing I did really enjoy with this release is that, unlike a lot of progressive metal bands, Neoplasmah craft complete songs, rather than a collection of musical segments.  Songwriting appears to be just as important to this band as showing off their technical skills.  The band takes things one step further by being able to blend all of the songs into a complete album rather than just a collection of separate and distinct songs.

This is an album that sounds better and better with repeated listens.  There is a lot going on musically that can be missed and revealed in hearing it again and again. 

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.

My Favorite Metal Band from Portugal

I am reposting this since Blogger went down. I did not have this saved anywhere so I am doing it from scratch.

Moonspell has been a band that I have been listening to since I first started getting into extreme metal. The band is another one that has made frequent changes to their sound, starting out as a black metal band and then incorporating more and more gothic metal influences until they took over the sound. Later Moonspell reincorporated black metal influences to end up with the healthy mix they have now. Moonspell has always retained their dark and dreary sound and the band's major defining characteristic has always been Fernando Ribeiro's soulful baritone.