Bubonic Christians - The Puppets of Satan

BUBONIC CHRISTIANS - The Puppets of Satan (Self release CD 2015)

I am familiar with this obscure French project called Bubonic Christians ever since I got their demo tape couple of years ago. Later I sadly missed the split tape with Eternal Majesty, but it’s great that Stephane remembered about me and sent his newest recording, which is “The Puppets of Satan” CD. This CD brings four tracks plus an outro, but it’s not a new material, sadly, as all of these songs (except one, the title track) have already been included also on the mentioned “Promo MMXIV” and the split tape. Well, I am not sure why release them so often, other than maybe this is the first time they finally made it to the CD (all previous releases were on cassettes), but I do hope that next time Bubonic Christians will deliver entirely new material.

Anyway, “The Puppets of Satan” doesn’t surprise me at all and basically this EP delivers exactly what I hoped and that is utterly harsh, raw sounding, obscure black metal. French black metal scene is known for their worship for the most mutilating and destructive harsh sounds – I am not even going to mention names now, as they should be known to you. And Bubonic Christians fits perfectly this scene, I guess. They hold the same or similar aesthetics and values when speaking of cryptic black metal. And so, you have here tracks like “Morbid” – where the title describes the atmosphere just perfectly and surely this is my favourite piece here (it’s also the fastest song on the CD) or “Let Me Piss On your Grave Stone”, which personally reminds me some mid era Darkthrone records. Both tracks have obviously been a part of “Promo MMXIV”. Two other pieces are new to me and “The Land Of Ropes” is pretty much similar to the “Let Me Piss…”, very good Darkthrone’ish black metal and the only thing, which I don’t like about it is that it ends very abruptly, like it was not finished. The last track is in similar vein and so is the outro, as it’s basically an instrumental piece and something like a foundation for a future song. More so, the vocals performed by Maxime Taccardi are some sick and totally possessed screams, shrieks, yells or whatever you call them. The production is raw, but surprisingly clean at the same time… and well, maybe Bubonic Christians doesn’t perform anything superb and it’s not the best black metal release of the year, but surely a solid and good stuff. I’m definitely looking forward to see what’s coming next from those French maniacs.

Final rate: 70/100