Voidhanger - The Antagonist

 

VOIDHANGER - The Antagonist (MALIGNANT VOICES - CD 2013)

Polish hell is filled with the insane and violent demons, who never feel mercy and take no prisoners, always opting for the massacre and bloodshed instead of the peace and friendly cup of tea. Voidhanger is a band, which actually appeared to this scene only a couple of years ago, but did so in excellent style with a killer full length LP “Wrathprayers”. I was truly crushed by those sounds, but that shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone, as the band line up consists of some well experienced in the warcraft musicians, known from such bands as Infernal War, Massemord, Medico Peste or Iperyt. “Wrathprayers” was an insane dose of crushing blackened thrash metal and soon after the release of it Voidhanger came back with another release, this time released through Malignant Voices titled “The Antagonist”. It is barely a MCD, but with five songs it has about 20 minutes on the clock, so it is enough to cause the serious damage once more and it surely will bring a total destruction around the place you play it. And trust me, destruction it brings, as those sounds have such a high dose of lethal energy and power that if it was a weapon then for sure it had a nuclear strength.

I simply worship such style of metal – deeply rooted in the traditions of thrash, death and black of the 80’s, but played with the current ferocity and with absolutely crushing, powerful production. Already such bands as Aura Noir have proved that such archaic music can be played with passion and in more “modern” way and many more bands are following this malignant path (Nocturnal Breed, WItchmaster, Destroyer 666… and more). Voidhanger brings nothing new to this style, but the quality of their music is better than in 99% of similar bands, crushing them instantly within the seconds of “Malignant Crescendo”, which begins the slaughter. Oh, what a fuckin ferocity, how damn merciless and aggressive this music is and how killer and violent are those riffs, making sure that the listener will do nothing else, but bang his head and praise the beast!!!!!! Every sound on “The Antagonist” is right, every riff rips the guts and spills blood… and I love it. Excellent energy and great power – Voidhanger is like great panzerdivision, attacking with everything they have. Each song is a great anthem of blackened thrash metal and finishing the MCD with Bathory’s “Sacrifice” (very well played!) it is a perfect listening experience; there’re no weaknesses. This will break your bones and knock you out... I cannot wait to hear some more music from those Polish demons.

Standout tracks: all

Final rate: 90/100

The Dead Goats - Path of the Goat

THE DEAD GOATS - Path of the Goat (Instant Classic - CD 2012)

I got interested in this band only because it’s been recommended to me by a friend. Well, I was a bit sceptic at first, but once I listened to a couple of samples of youtube or somewhere else, can’t remember now, it turned out that the music is so good that I just had to get the whole album. I had to be hurry, as the CD is quite limited, so I quickly putted my order… and he it is, nice digipack in my hands and the disc is already in the player. They’re called The Dead Goats and “Path of the Goat” is their first release. By the look on the artwork for “Path of the Goat” you would probably think they’re sludge, doomy, stoned kind of band… the artwork is very colourful and the drawing is just completely different to what you would expect from the old school death metal band! And I must admit that looks really cool, I think. I like it a lot. Sure, there’re no zombies, guts, no blood and dismembered bodies… also no priest has been hanged on the tree… but still, the artwork for “Path of the Goat” looks just damn cool, to me and I guess it is a great advantage if the band creates something different within this niche called “old school death metal”.

So, don’t expect stoned doom metal here, The Dead Goats are 100% archaic, old styled Swedish sounding death metal. The band goes way back to the origins of this style, in my opinion, and just like bands like Death Breath, Bombs of Hades and Bastard Priest, they also do take a lot of influence from the crust, hard core (which were the styles which influenced the early death metal bands a lot, with bands like Amebix and Wolfpack), with all that D-beat shit, which is so characteristic and memorable. Obviously it has been mixed with the classic Swedish death metal bands (Dismember, Nihilist, Entombed) plus clearly also with Autopsy and Repulsion. So, it may seem like it’s nothing new, but I think that The Dead Goats have enough of their own identity and quality to stand above the majority of old styled bands, which flood the scene nowadays. Besides, they’re just different to all those great bands like Graveyard, Tormented, Undead Creep, etc. It’s probably because quite often that core / punkish influence is almost dominating here and when you hear D-beat with simple riff and some vocals, which occasionally also sound more like a hard core’ish scream rather than the classic death growl, then it really makes the difference. For example the first song “Lullabies for the Damned” will sound more like punked Autopsy and Murder Squad rather than Dismember.

Anyway, the riffing on the entire album is really great; I like the energy of this music and its atmosphere, with this killer guitar sound, which is so characteristic for so many Swedish productions. Obviously The Dead Goats doesn’t discover anything new, but their music is really cool and I think that if you like bands, which I mentioned above and also Usurpress, who all I think have quite a lot in common with The Dead Goats, then “Path of the Goat” will really be your thing! More so, there’re enough dismemberized riffs to make the classic Swedish death metal maniacs sweat and scream in excitement and some of those riffs will even more melodic, but this melody is not really too epic and memorable like it happens in bands like Lifeless or Undead Creep. For example the third song, “Rapture Corrupted”, will seriously kick your ass with some awesome riffage in this style… This music is filthy and obscure, punked death metal and such songs as “Even Death May Die” (which starts with a nice piano theme, followed by some classic Swedish, Dismember-esque, riffs!), “The Goat is Dead Long Live the Goat” are real highlights… Finally “I am Gangrene” is just fuckin awesome song (my favourite from the whole CD), which always makes me bang my head like crazy… and I can go on and on like that; the whole material on “Path of the Goat” is very even and there’s no bullshit anywhere here… For sure this is one of the best Polish releases of the recent years and I guess here in this country it also is something quite original, no one else plays like The Dead Goats in Poland! So, get the CD if you want, or maybe a tape version (which comes with a pencil with band’s logo on it hehe) – I guarantee you’ll like it.

Standout tracks: “Even Death May Die”, “The Goat is Dead Long Live the Goat”, “I am Gangrene”, “Rapture Corrupted”

Final rate: 78/100

Profanal - Rotten Bodies

PROFANAL - Rotten Bodies (Self released demo CD 2010)

Finally, after having collected a couple of split 7”EPs and a debut full length CD, I managed to put my hands on the demo “Rotten Bodies” of the Italian gravediggers and corpse molesters Profanal. Well, my enthusiasm for this demo was quite big, as I really liked all the previous releases of this band and I can say that surely “Rotten Bodies” didn’t disappoint me and delivered the music, which I exactly expected to find. More so, the quality of this demo material – even if not as good as from “Black Chaos” CD – is more than satisfying, so I can say that adding this demo to my collection was a damn good choice.

From the strictly musical point of view “Rotten Bodies” offers more or less, but a similar sort of death metal, which you can find on any of the two split EPs or on “Black Chaos” album. Profanal exhumes the filthy and obscure old school death metal, very much influenced by the Swedish scene and bands like… uh, fuck that, I won’t give you any names, as what’s the point? They keep coming back in every review nowadays, so I think you know well what names I would put now (besides, together with that Swedish influence I would definitely had to add the inspiration of Death – from their early albums – as well as a bit of Carcass and Autopsy!). But forget about a plain and simple “cut and paste” sort of imitators… I think that Profanal has something more to offer than just that and as much as I liked their other recordings, I like “Rotten Bodies” as well. There are some truly crushing riffs and killer songs in here with “Egg Fetus” being probably my favourite (maybe because it is slightly slower and thus it has really great feeling and dark, thrilling atmosphere? Besides, it really reminds me one of my very favourite bands of all time!). And then I can pick up also “Condemned to Vomiting” – uh, what a joyful title... but the riffs in this song are again very fuckin good. Actually the whole demo, with its four songs, is just a crusher and I feel really enthusiastic and passionate, when listening to such extremely well composed and performed death metal. Especially as the production of “Rotten Bodies” is also really damn good… the guitars have that great tone, which will instantly bring your attention and the drums and vocals have also been really well recorded. Finally the whole demo – on my copy – has been finished with a bonus track, which is a live recording of “You’ll Never See…”. It may not sound as good as the rest of the demo, but for live recording of an underground band it also isn’t as bad as one would think… besides, I guess it can say a lot about the influences of Profanal… Ha, all in all I must say that “Rotten Bodies” really fuckin shreds and I strongly recommend you getting this demo, as well as all next Profanal releases… This band didn’t disappoint me so far, so well fuckin done, you spaghetti freaks!

Standout tracks: “Egg Fetus”, “Condemned to Vomiting”

Final rate: 85/100

KILLER COVER of Spawn of Flesh, orig by God Macabre

Gehenna - Black Seared Heart

GEHENNA - Black Seared Heart (HOLYCOUST - CD 1997)

I may be wrong, but somehow I have a feeling that Gehenna is one of the most underrated Norwegian black metal bands from the old days. I suppose it doesn’t happen too often when people mention this band as one of their favourite and the influence and while they may always keep mentioning the likes of Darkthrone, Immortal, Enslaved, Satyricon, Emperor or even Dimmu Borgir as well as some other bands spawned in the freezing North back in the early to mid 90’s, then Gehenna is not praised so much – at least this is how I feel. And it is a shame, as clearly it was one of the most talented and original bands, at least in my opinion, and I’m here to say that they have actually been one of MY favourites, when speaking of the Norwegian black metal scene. Their “Seen Through the Veils of Darkness” LP is undoubtedly among my preferred albums, which still gives me chills. Hmm, maybe Gehenna never got so much attention because they seemed to stay a bit away from all those church burnings, mafias and stuff like that and they debuted a bit later than the first Norwegian black metal bands? Or maybe because they happened to change their style in the end of the 90’s so much? I don’t know. It is only my impression. I liked this band ever since I first heard it – and it was at the time of the “Malice” release - and I have a lot of respect for their unique style. And as a fan and collector I was really happy when somewhere in 1997 Holycoust Records has released a compilation CD with some rare songs of Gehenna, as it is always great thing to have also demos or other unknown songs in the collection.

In this case they have provided a CD, which first of all features the original 1993 demo titled “Black Seared Heart”. This demo is very rare, as originally it was released in a criminally small quantity of 100 copies, so I guess if there are any real, original copies of it circulating anywhere then they must be worth a fortune. The demo was so rare that a couple of songs from it were also released on 7”EP (by Necromantic Gallery Productions) under the title “Ancestor of the Darkly Sky”, but this compilation CD offers “Black Seared Heart” demo in its entirety, so great! Additionally, “Black Seared Heart” compilation contains a couple of songs, which Gehenna has recorded in 1994. Back then the band have entered the studio to record a full length album, but terminated the recordings only two days later and the only result of this short recording session were three songs, which have been recorded in raw versions (with no keyboards, only with drums, bass and guitars; Sarcana, keyboard player, has joined the band few months later and only then some keyboards and vocals parts have been added to these songs when she already was in the band). “Black Seared Heart” compilation has only two of these three songs, as the third one (“Angelwings and Ravenclaws”) has been lost somewhere… hmm, don’t ask me how can you lose a song, OK? Finally the third part of “Black Seared Heart” is a song called “Midwinter Forest”, recorded during the rehearsal of 30th of March 1994 and it supposedly is the only version of this oldest Gehenna song. OK, as you can already see, “Black Seared Heart” is a very tasty compilation; and I hope this introduction of what it contains will be enough to make every Norwegian black metal fan sweat in excitement.

If you know the early full length albums of Gehenna, then there won’t be any surprises for you, speaking of the quality and style of the music from this compilation, as clearly this band was developing their own sound and style ever since the very first recording. And that is something what only confirms how amazing that scene in Norway was back in the early 90’s! I mean there were so many killer bands and almost each of them had its own style and sound. There was nothing like in the Swedish death metal scene for instance, where 90% of the bands sounded the same, because they all recorded at the Sunlight and had similar style of music (not that I complain on that, as I worship the Swedish death metal scene!). But it only proves that whatever happened in Norway back then was truly unique and special… not only because of what was happening around the scene, but mainly because of the phenomenal and immortal music, which those bands have been creating back then.

Anyway, starting with “Black Seared Heart” demo… first of all, it amazes me how good is the production of it. I mean, if you listen to some demos of other bands from that time – like of Thorns, Mysticum, Manes, Enslaved, Emperor or whoever – they often had just terribly poor production, but for “Black Seared Heart” this is not the case. The sound here is quite clear, you can actually hear the riffs, keyboards, drums and everything what the band has recorded. Sure, musically Gehenna was also different from these bands, which I mentioned here, music wise they have played something much slower, more atmospheric, with many keyboards parts, melodies… This demo may be not the most phenomenal material recorded in Norway back in those days, in many ways it may lack a bit of that evilness and cold, grim mood, which other bands have developed, but it is exchanged for some catchiness and really memorable music. I like the title song probably most, but “Angelwings and Ravenclaws” is also excellent. “Black Seared Heart” is quite aggressive song, comparing it to the rest, while “Angelwings…” has just an awesome, catchy riffing and some truly memorable moments – no wonder then that this song was later re-recorded for the full length CD.

Then we have those two unheard versions of songs, which ended up on the albums. Well, to be honest they don’t bring anything new to what we already know, except that these versions are much rawer and the sound is also harsher (oh, the vocals are especially severe…) but it is always exciting to listen to “The Witch is Born”, which surely is one of the best and most memorable songs in the career of Gehenna – at least in my opinion it is a true anthem, which I remember I even used to cover with my band back in the 90’s. The second of the two songs – “Night of the Serpents Judgement” – has been retitled to “Mystical Play of Shadows” on “Seen through the Veils of Darkness”, so not only some arrangements, but also the entire lyrics for it has been changed, what makes this version a bit special… Musically this song reminds me early Dimmu Borgir, from their “Inn I Evighetens Morke” 7”EP and “For All Tid” era, but that surely is not a complain, as I really like those two Dimmu releases! And there’s one final song left – called “Midwinter Forest” – and as I already mentioned it is an unreleased track, recorded during a rehearsal in 1994 and it is the only existing version of this track (parts of which were written even before the “Black Seared Heart” demo was recorded). Well, as an rehearsal track, it doesn’t sound as good as the previous songs, but it also isn’t terribly bad, you can hear what is it all about without any problems… and musically it reminds Ancient a bit (who never have been my favourite Norwegian black metal band), so maybe this is why I don’t like it so much and treat it more like an interesting addition to the compilation CD that something truly exciting and worthy… for sure “Midwinter Forest” is the least interesting song from the whole “Black Seared Heart”.

So, I hope I described the content of this compilation quite well. I can say that for sure it is a worthy release and a mandatory album for the fans of Gehenna. The original version of Holycoust could have been done a bit better, maybe the booklet should have had some extras like old photographs and original demo artworks, but it still looks fine. And if you cannot find the original pressing - I have heard that this compilation was added to one of the “First Spell” album re-releases, so it should be easily available in one form or another. For me this is a mandatory release, and I say so not only as a Gehenna fan, but also as a worshipper of the Norwegian black metal scene.

Standout tracks: “Angelwings and Ravenclaws”, “The Witch is Born”, “Black Seared Heart”

Final rate: 75/100