Garota - Czarne wizje

GAROTA - Czarne wizje (GODZ OV WAR - CD 2022)

I may not be the biggest fan of what’s been coming from the Polish black metal for the last few years or so, but everywhere there are some exceptions. And even though Garota didn’t destroy my world, I can say that their debut album ”Czarne wizje” is pretty fuckin good. From the first run through, this album caught my attention, I was quite impressed that a new band was able to deliver such a good material. Not a bad start, really. 

“Czarne wizje” offers eight ferocious slabs of black metal, infected with a small hit of thrash. Garota doesn’t waste time on unnecessary intros, they don’t even bother to have fancy solos, melodies or whatever. Their music is a bit simplistic in that aspect, but not primitive at all. And it’s just straight forward, aggressive black metal. Tempo wise, it is mostly mid paced in that old school black / thrash way, with quite a lot of blasts spread throughout the album, so there’s a whole fuckin lot of energy coming from these sounds. Surprisingly, it’s not so obvious, with which bands you could compare Garota music, I think that they managed to avoid some strict comparisons, even if the music is well buried within the black and thrash tomb (well, maybe Sodom then?!). But for example, vocals do remind me Abusiveness, where Mścisław always had this very unique and characteristic style of vocals and arrangements. Garota’s Asbiel sounds pretty similar to my ears (which I’m not complaining about!) and I think these vocals also add a bit more originality to Garota’s music. 

Despite its aggressiveness and absolute viciousness, I find the music as quite easily listenable for black metal, which is perhaps due to the very good, clean production of the album. These sounds clicked immediately and proved to be surprisingly catchy and memorable. Maybe that’s a reason why I had enough of Garota after few spins and just had to take that damn CD out of the CD player. When I came back to “Czarne wizje” a few days later, everything still sounded great, so my overall feedback for this album is definitely positive. It may not be the most groundbreaking and insane album of the year, but it’s a solid and worthy material, which deserves recommendation. Godz ov War describes it as “eight ominous, nihilistic and wrathful tracks” - there’s no reason whatsoever you should not believe them. 

Verdict: 80/200