Skeletal Augury - Bless of Destroyed, Raped, Dismembered Flesh

Bloody raw

I had a plan a while back to do a sort of series where I'd choose countries that are notable in terms of population but have comparatively very little impact on metal at large (so basically everywhere except North America, Northern Europe/Scandinavia, Japan, and Brazil) and dive into their metal scene and see what it's like.  In doing research, I've found it's not quite as interesting as I was hoping, so I'm like 90% likely to just not bother with the idea at this point, but because of that research period, I've collected quite a few solid metal bands out of China that deserve some actual coverage.  Skeletal Augury is one of those bands, and god damn is Bless of Destroyed, Raped, Dismembered Flesh a ripping experience.

This album's main strength is also it's greatest flaw, and that's that it's very by-the-book.  Skeletal Augury play black/thrash and follow all the rules while doing it.  On one hand, this is a surefire way to be at the very least "good", since black/thrash is a hard genre to fuck up as long as you don't try to get too cute with it, so at the absolute worst this could've wound up just being boring.  Luckily, despite playing along to all of the genre tropes to the letter, there's enough energy and ferocity to keep it fresh and interesting the entire way through.  It takes a bit to really grab me, but from "Lord of Damnation" until the end it is just fucking dominant.  This revels in the primitive slop of the old masters like Hellhammer and Sodom, with an equal helping of the razor-sharp edge of slightly newer (but still old) champions like Nifelheim. Special mention has to go to Li Bai's drumming, which is surprisingly tight for how raw and nasty the album is on the whole.  Check out "Barbaric Realm", he's on another level compared to the rest of the guys on that one.

But like I said, all of this is a bit of a problem as well, because for most of the runtime this isn't particularly distinct when compared to most bands in the genre today.  Bless is a very shallow album with no twists or nuance in the songwriting to help it stand out as anything other than barbaric and vicious.  In fairness, that's all it needs to be, and it succeeds at what it sets out to do very well, but it does struggle to keep your attention at times thanks to how samey it is.  There are very few standout moments here.  "Black Hydra" sports a ridiculously frantic main riff that serves as the highlight of the entire album in my eyes, and "Stench and Twisted Lust" sounds like a lost Slayer track from around the Haunting the Chapel/Reign in Blood era, but apart from those and the few sections pointed out in the previous paragraph, this all just kinda does what you expect it to do and then dissipates in the sunlight.  It's a shame because I like this a lot on the surface, but it's not deep enough to really enjoy beyond that.

Despite that, this is a serious barnburner when it's on, and I've found myself going back to this an awful lot since discovering it.  I've probably made it sound worse than it actually is but that's simply because I find it's hard to really go in depth with this style.  It only really hits one note but that's all it really needs to do, and I'm not about to fault a band for kicking ass at the only thing they need to do.


RATING: 79%

Hellripper - Black Arts & Alchemy

In league with the entire Ars Goetia

Hellripper is a good example of how to do a clone band correctly.  On the surface, James McBain's one-man project of pure devastation is commonly known as "The Midnight of Scotland", and that isn't wrong, but instead of sounding like a hollow shell of that American monolith of throwback viciousness, Black Arts & Alchemy is every bit as wild and frenzied as any other band in the current scene. 

This kid knows what he's doing, because Hellripper is the exact kind of beer-and-hash-soaked demonry that bands like Midnight and Whipstriker have been making popular in recent years.  This kind of Venom-cum-Motorhead-cum-Onyourface is just a god damned blast and I'm cool with bands aping this sound as shamelessly as possible for the foreseeable future.  There's very little here beyond the surface flash of high octane 70s Motorhead put through the filter of virgin sacrifice and bloody sodomy and fuck that's all I want it to be.  This is primo caveman metal, with no greater goal beyond simply rocking the fuck out as hard as possible and breaking as many faces as possible on your way through.  These riffs sound like a Harley doing a burnout on your face, what the fuck else do you want?

There isn't much to dig into considering that, even beyond being very simple black/speed metal in the vein of early Venom, it's only a four track EP.  "All Hail the Goat" starts off sounding like a biker bar on fire and it never slows down from there.  All four tracks sound pretty much the same but they all fucking rock so who cares?  It's fast, high octane metalpunk with the speed and energy of early 80s German speed metal and it sounds exactly like how you're imagining it to sound.  My only regret is that the digital promo doesn't include the fifth track, a CD-only bonus track cover of Running Wild's "Iron Heads".  If you don't know why that will inevitably being the banger of the fucking century then I don't even want to know you.

For what it's worth, the first five times I tried to listen to this, I'd get about halfway through the first track before iTunes would crash.  Black Arts & Alchemy is so vicious that it kills technology.


RATING: 93%

Grave Violator - Back to the Cult

PUNCH YOUR CHILDREN, START A FIRE

Sometimes there's no deeper meaning to a piece of art.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, right?  Metal is definitely prone to beard-stroking pontification, with regular sounding albums being explained by the band as a concept album about the cycle of life and death, or the history and downfall of some fictional civilization that nobody but the writers care about.  Bands like to go on about philosophy and psychology and tend to try exploring those themes on a surface level, but ultimately just write more tunes about death and satan.  And hey man, that's all cool!  I've read Camus, I have deeply held beliefs and interests, my worldview is shaped by many things that I'm sure I'd want to inject in my music.  I'd love to write music that delves into the intricate lore behind the writings of Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith, it's totally natural.

But sometimes it's just nice when a band drops the pretense and just aims for naked filth from the opening notes and makes no intention of hiding what they're about.  And when the opening notes of a track called fuckin' "Baptized in Filthy Semen" first tore through my speakers, well let's just say I knew exactly what I was going to get and Grave Violator fucking delivered on that front.

Back to the Cult doesn't really do anything interesting on a musical level, it's just by the numbers black/thrash with raspy vocals and razor sharp riffs, and that's all something like this needs to be.  The entire appeal here is the same as an early John Waters flick like Pink Flamingos or something.  It's just pure, unrefined trash with no other purpose other than shock value, and while it lacks the sardonic wit of GWAR or something, it makes up for the lack of cleverness with sheer unabashed attitude.  Odes to debauchery, sacrificial murder, and bumfights are abound in a style reminiscent of the primitive, bone shaving ravenousness of Sarcofago or Impaled Nazarene.  Back to the Cult straddles the line between black/thrash and metalpunk at times but tends to land firmly on the thrash side of the equation.  The whole point is to just rip you to shreds with frantic riffing and manic tempos, and that's all it tries to do.  There are a few atmosphere-building acoustic sections but they're brief and always give way to more blasphemy and degeneracy.  This is offensive stuff, even to me personally!  I'm a virtue signalling soyboy cuck so lyrics about raping whores does make me uncomfortable deep down, but I've said long ago that you're going to be a simpering joyless turd if you're into metal but can't take tongue-in-cheek shock value for what it is.  So yeah I can't defend the lyrical raunch on the basis of the words themselves, but it's so clearly not played straight and performed by a band of clear goofballs whose EPK includes promo pics of them braiding their hair and peeing as a group.  It's low level trolling, and that's fine if you hate that sort of thing, but these guys are clearly here to have a good time and absolutely shatter the barriers of good taste, and I can get down with that.

This may not surpass their obvious heroes like Nifelheim or Sarcofago, but punk-infused speed metal like the title track or vicious biting thrash like "Knife Fighter" is just too much fun to put down.  It's poo-flecked trash that was rolled around in glitter and used IV needles but sometimes that sort of raunchy, wild west lawlessness is a fucking blast.  If there's any sincerity to be found (and obviously this sort of high-speed irreverence is not known for sincerity), it's that I fully believe that these guys are a bunch of perpetually hammered oogles who get their kicks by chugging Olvi and throwing shoes at passing nuns.  Do they contribute to society in a positive way?  Hell no, but neither they nor I want them to.


RATING: 79%

Nailblack - Envied

Painted fingernails are so edgy

Black/thrash is an easy style to get right, but a hard style to make interesting.  Ohio's Nailblack are a good example of this phenomenon, because their debut, Envied, checks all the boxes that makes the style worthwhile without being exceptional in any way.  Cycling through mid paced thrash beats, slightly more uptempo d beats, and high octane blasting, this is pretty much the definite example of a redundant release. 

The band's biggest mistake is simply that they don't go for the throat all the time, because they're definitely at their best when they put the pedal to the floor and just tear out at full throttle.  Tracks like "The Wolf" and "Another Holy War" are ripping riff fests that satiate the unwashed thrasher in all of us, but don't stick around for long afterwards, while "Promises" and "Step Into Infinity" just stroll on by with no consequence, opting for more churning mid paced tempos and a few feeble attempts at acoustic atmosphere.  When they're at their least interesting, aping cliches the hardest, they're at their most enjoyable.  Nailblack are the type of band that's really frustrating to listen to and critique, because there's nothing inept about them or this release, it's just the kind of thing that doesn't need to exist when D666 is still around, ya know?  They have everything a fan of the style needs: trebly production, raspy and throaty screams, subtle sense of sinister melody within simplistic riffs that are basically one part German thrash and one part Swedish BM (more on the thrash side, natch), it's just that none of it is particularly engaging.  It's about on par with any random no-name release you can find on Hells Headbangers.  There's nothing particularly wrong with Nailblack, but I can guarantee you I won't be coming back for another round once this review is published.


RATING - 55%

Skeletonwitch - The Apothic Gloom

Apparently "Apothic" isn't a real word

Okay so apparently while I wasn't looking, the vocalist of Skeletonwitch left?  What the hell, yo?  He was one of the most instantly recognizable traits of the band if you ask me.  His high pitched rasp wasn't really so much of a rasp as it was like... a dry gargle?  I can't even explain it, he was neither dry nor wet with his approach, but it was something special.  More people should try to sound like Chance Garnette.  So what now?  They got some new guy to totally fuck up one of the coolest parts of the band right?

Well... nah, he's rad too.

I feel like that's the main purpose of The Apothic Gloom, it's just a short, four track EP intended to acclimate long time fans like myself to the new guy, and it's a wonderful way to do such a thing.  His style is a little deeper and more crusty, a little more "normal" so to speak than the instantly recognizable GRRAH of Chance, but it works just as well with Skeletonwitch's signature style of thrash metal with little bits of basically everything else thrown in.  The Apothic Gloom takes some more influence from Forever Abomination (the only album besides the future classic Beyond the Permafrost that actually qualifies as essential listening) in that there's a lot more black metal influence here than usual.  This is black/thrash but not in the sense of what most bands with that label imply.  A lot of bands like Witchaven and such, while good, sound more like really lo-fi thrash like early Sodom or Kreator instead of an actual fusing of the relentless pummeling of thrash metal with the melancholic atmosphere of black metal.  That's what Skeletonwitch does here, most notably on the title track and "Red Death, White Light".  The seven minute closer in particular elicits a lot of ethereal tremolo melodies and, well, gloomy atmsophere layered over the blistering thrash underneath.  It works really well and I really hope the next album has more in line with that style.

The other two tracks, "Well of Despair" and "Black Waters" are more in line with Beyond the Permafrost in the sense that they're clearly based in high speed thrash with huge swaths of melody.  "Black Waters" admittedly draws a bit more from Immortal than any given thrash band but the base is still there.  Skeletonwitch is a band that's never content with where they are and are always willing to mix it up, and this EP is no exception.  Like I said, "Red Death, White Light" is a good example since it starts with with such an ethereal delaydelaydelay melody.  They're dipping their toes into post-black like ten years after it became trendy but are still nailing it.  So just like always, they're not exactly blazing new trails as much as they're just taking pre-established ideas and arranging them in an inventive way and standing out in a crowded sea of metal today. 

tl;dr - This is a short review for a short EP so basically the important thing to note is that this is an excellent (and quite literal) marriage of black and thrash metal with great mid range vocals and tons of excellent melodies.  The riffs aren't as quite as strong as they were a decade ago but the essence of the band is still there and probably the best it's been in five years.  Hopefully this signals a rejuvenation and the new album will completely smoke.


RATING - 83%

Skeletonwitch - Beyond the Permafrost

None so cold

For a personal record, this marks the third time I've reviewed Beyond the Permafrost since 2008.  Initially I had given it a good score but complained that the tracks were too samey, and the second time was just a short two paragraph blurb on Metal Crypt that I honestly didn't put much effort into because I just hadn't written anything in a while and wanted to get something out (Sorry Michel).  Since then, I've been haunted by the memory of that first review.  How many times had I listened to this album before crapping out a quick review during my poor (but productive) era?  Like... twice?  That's the only explanation for how a 17 year old version of myself could seriously manage to listen to this and come to the conclusion that it lacks variety.  Not only is this Skeletonwitch's most varied album by a long shot in hindsight (this was their newest album when I reviewed it previously), but it's one of the most blatantly varied thrash records in recent memory, with more nods to black metal and shreddy trad metal than pretty much any other band in the genre.

Skeletonwitch belongs to the trio of bands that tend to get classified as retro thrash that I never, ever agreed with.  To me, retro thrash is a tag reserved for bands who are doomed to hopelessly relive the 80s via staunchly opposing new and creative ideas.  Bands like Violator and Fueled by Fire and Merciless Death whatnot who spend roughly 100% of their recorded material wishing upon a star that they could have been in Exodus.  Bands like Cross Examination who try so desperately to capture the same lightning in the same bottle that Municipal Waste have, despite playing the style of music long after it became a popular and established genre again, thus making them look like yet another band of trendsters.  These three bands who get grouped in with this semi-derogatory movement of retro thrash are Vektor, Exmortus, and Skeletonwitch.  Vektor are worlds away from a majority of the silly movement they get lumped in with due to the fact that they're so far removed from the silly cliches that populate the scene.  Not only are their lyrical themes unique, but their style of writing is so much more thought out and, dare I say intellectual than most of the Havok's in the world that there really is no comparison.  Exmortus should be obvious why they don't belong.  Thrash is merely one component of their masterful blend of styles, and I'm hesitant to even consider it as their main style (Beyond the Fall of Time never happened in my universe, don't shatter my fragile psyche), they just tend to tour with a lot of silly thrash bands due to the band's connections/friendships and the fact that they hail from southern California.

And then we have Skeletonwitch, from the grim and evil fjords of southern Ohio.  Normally I get pissy when I see the tag of "black/thrash" metal because it usually seems to mean "sounds like Pleasure to Kill" about 90% of the time, but Skeletonwitch are one of the few bands I've found who can successfully do justice to the genre (at least on their second and fourth albums, not so much the first and third).  For real, the silly image you imagine when hearing a name like Skeletonwitch and the tag of retro thrash sure as hell doesn't bring to mind a band a serious, menacing, and vitriolic as this.  I mean really, listen to the descending tremolo riffs and the blastbeats in "Limb from Limb", that right there is an honest to goodness black metal influence, not Kreator riffs with rough production.  "Feast Upon Flesh" also flirts with black metal style dissonance and straight fucking evil sounding tremolo patterns.  That is why I get just as frustrated when I see them lumped in with the retro thrash scene along with Vektor and Exmortus.  Those three don't fit, and if you consider them to be a part of that whole thing, then I'm afraid we can't be friends.

The honest black metal influence is just one aspect of their sound, which is what makes any claim of facelessness factually incorrect.  I mean, it doesn't take a classically trained music scholar to tell you that "Within My Blood" and "Sacrifice for the Slaughtergod" were written by the same band, but they really don't sound all that similar to one another.  Some tracks are far more melodically focused ("Soul Thrashing Black Sorcery", "Within My Blood"), while others go straight for the throat with razor sharp thrashing intensity ("Upon Wings of Black", "Sacrifice for the Slaughtergod", "Fire From the Sky"), and some even go for a more slow building atmosphere of malice with a strong lead dissonance and churning sections of uncomfortable aggression ("Cast into the Open Sea", "Baptized in Flames").  There are so many different ideas on display, I didn't even touch on the melodic death metal inspired sections that are sprinkled tastefully throughout the runtime. 

One thing that helps the band stand out are the versatile vocals of Chance Garnette.  He mainly sticks to a high barking growl (I hesitate to call it a rasp, since there's a really coarse grit to it much like a deep death metal growl) and sparingly belts out a low bellow, sometimes overlaying the two.  The thing about him is that he's good at both styles, and switches between them appropriately.  Ya know, unlike Trevor Strnad who mars an otherwise stellar album in Nocturnal with his awful screech.  In an album full of consistently high quality songwriting and performances, he still manages to find a way to stand out.  I mean even the silly "TWO THREE GO!" part before the solo on "Within My Blood" (the climax of the album, mind you) manages to just be goddamn awesome.  The entire record hinges on that moment, the climax of the last song, and with three completely unnecessary shouts he gives it a character that it would have never had otherwise, and makes the entire romp feel like it was all worth it.  The fact that they're his last vocals before the very, very end highlight the fact that we're in the home stretch, and he's relieved to finally be reaching the end, he's almost home.  It works, and the solo that follows does not disappoint.  Beyond the Permafrost is one of the few albums I can think of off the top of my head that leave me with a smile and a feeling of satisfaction upon finishing.

Another thing that I feel gets understated a bit is Skeletonwitch's almost Bolt Thrower-esque ability to make their best material also be the most simple.  I won't lie to you, there are some challenging passages and over the top technicality in bits and pieces ("Upon Wings of Black" and most notably "Soul Thrashing Black Sorcery") but I'll be damned if the best songs aren't the most stripped down and basic.  I've mentioned "Within My Blood" several times already, and that's not just for the hell of it.  It's based on a pretty basic melody and doesn't make any sudden movements or progress in any way other than exactly how you'd expect it to go, but it's satisfying because it knows what it is and doesn't try to be anything else.  The title track is another brilliant example of a track with no surprises but makes up for it with sheer enthusiasm.  If that bridge doesn't make you pump your fist or bang your head, then I don't want to know you.  But the track that really takes the cake in this regard is easily "Vengeance Will Be Mine".  Listen to it, it has like three riffs in the whole song and just repeats the same verse twice.  But that verse is so irresistible to sing along with and the solo during the climax is so stupidly simple that I can't help but love it.  It's easy to air guitar, easy to sing, easy to just rock all over the goddamn place.  Skeletonwitch does this so well, they allow you to indulge in the big dumb caveman part of your brain while still having a ton of fun, giving you plenty of options of how exactly you can tard out, and keeps the presentation and production quality so high that you don't even feel like you're being stupid.

Most of the time an album tries to be a little bit of everything, it ends up bland across the board.  That's where Beyond the Permafrost excels, it actually manages to be great at everything it touches.  The dissonance is tasteful and the melody is powerful, the thrash is hard and fast and the trad metal leaning and dual lead melodies shred like nobody's business, the death metal tweaks and rhythms are crushing, and the black metal overtones are both subtle and prevalent at the same time.  Everything works, and I think that is the album's downfall in a way.  The following two albums (Breathing the Fire and Forever Abomination) would be much more focused efforts, with a lot less grabbing from random styles and more focusing on one or two niche areas, and as a result they'd be less interesting and less entertaining.  Do yourself a favor and pick up Beyond the Permafrost, five years later I still spin it and enjoy it just as much as I did back when I realized how great it was.

2007 was a great year, wasn't it?


RATING - 93%

Cemetery Lust - Screams of the Violated

Pleasure to ReKreate

I've gone on record before claiming my main problem with the black/thrash subgenre is that there's typically little more to it than just molesting Kreator over and over again, and I still stand by that.  The title of "black/thrash" is such an egregious misnomer for this niche sound that I really think that we as a metal community need to rename it.  How many of these bands actually have any semblance of black metal in their music?  There are raspy vocals and harsh production and the occasional blast beat here and there but for the most part this style is thrash through and through.  Bands like Witchaven, Black Fast, Hellcannon, Ketzer, and the subject of this review, Cemetery Lust, all exemplify this problem.  Screams of the Violated here is essentially the twelve quadrillionth reimagining of Kreator's seminal classic, Pleasure to Kill, and I knew this going in based entirely on the aesthetics of the album.  But with that said, this is still rather enjoyable for fans of the style, or fans of extreme metal in general.

Squid Nasty and Nasty Nate's riffing is exemplified pretty well by their own names: nasty and repetitive.  There's very little variety on display here, with all but one track, "Black Angels of Hell", consisting of almost nothing but lightning fast buzzsaw riffs that were already written twenty five years ago.  That said, the energy put in by the band coupled with the excellently raw production make these riffs sharp and vicious as opposed to dry and tired.  This type of sound is perfect for the style if you ask me, it's rough and dirty but no instrument is compromised due to poor recording.  This is going to shock you, surely, but the vocals are reminiscent of Mille Petrozza.  It sucks that I can't think of any point of comparison other than Kreator, but really, give this a listen and you'll understand.  This is Pleasure to Kill worship and little else.  The strange part about all of this is that it's good.

For real, this album is preposterously infectious.  Despite (or perhaps because of) the riffs being so cliche, they are instantly hooky and lasting.  This album doesn't have a whole lot working for it in terms of originality, obviously (I've compared this to Kreator... what, twenty seven times already?), but it makes up for it with energy and songwriting.  It's a cavalcade of cliches, but it's put together rather well.  Fans of pretty much any band I've named dropped here will find something to love.  The band dubs their style "Rape Thrash", which I was hoping to make jokes about, but the unoriginality sapped my joke-making ability and the sheer ferociousness simply broke my brain.  "Black Angels of Hell" is bookended by two slower, doomier segments, but the rest of the album is vicious to the core, with highlight tracks being "Resurrected Whore", "Night of the Creep", and "Perverted Aggressor".


RATING - 79%

Depremacy - Exorcism

Basics are solid, execution needs work

Continuing my slog through local demos I've amassed over time, I present to you all another young thrash outfit, Joliet's own Depremacy.  This one is a bit of an oddity, considering there's apparently a tracklisting snafu.  The intended tracklist is in an entirely different order than my copy (and what is posted on MA), and the album cover is also completely different on my copy (I have the cover shown here).  Nevertheless, it is indeed the same EP.  Musically, this is thrash as we know it at it's most basic form.  The current generation of bands under this black/thrash seem to be purely thrash musically, but sport a really rough, thin production and a raspy vocalist and that seems to be enough to attach the "black" addendum to the genre association despite those same descriptors fitting early Kreator material perfectly well.  Nomenclature disputes aside, the music contained on Exorcism is extremely reminiscent of one of my favorite pet bands, the mighty Witchaven.  So if you're familiar with the Hell's Headbangers brand of bestial thrash, you know what to expect straight out of the gate with Depremacy.

Now I try not to complain about lo-fi production, but goddamn are the issues distracting here.  There are painful spikes in volume whenever the band drops out to let one guitar play a riff solo at the beginning of a section, or pretty much any time a song starts or fades or the dynamics shift in even the subtlest way.  The EQ job here is completely awful and it's incredibly distracting.  The entire mix is oversaturated and clips to high heaven, it's a real challenge on the ears.  The playing is sloppy beyond the point of charismatic as well.  I get that this is a young and energetic band and the whole performance being unhinged and unrestrained is probably intentional, but the drums fall off time far too often and the bass break in "Exorcism" is off by what seems like a whole beat and it's just distracting as opposed to organic.  I see what the band is going for, they're going for the "wild and uncontrollable" thing, but it just doesn't work here very well.  In addition to that, the songwriting is fairly bland with only a few shining spots, so when you put it all together this just isn't much to sneeze at.  I think the band has potential and would be more listenable if they cleaned up the dynamics and channeled a bit more of their aggression into songwriting instead of just purely passion.  These kids are putting their all into their performance, there just isn't a lot to show for it as of yet.


RATING - 48%

Witchaven - Totalitarian State of War

OH SHIT LOOK OUT

Every once in a while, a band comes along and just completely dominates you. You know damn well that there are better bands out there, but you just can't get over how awesome this one pet band is. Currently, Witchaven is this band for me. I'll be walking down Venom Avenue, the coolest street in all of Metaltown, and people will come up to me and ask "Hey dude have you heard the new Nile? Whaddya think of it?" and the only words that come out of my mouth are "FUCKING WITCHAVEN! YEAH FUCK YEAH YEAH! FAY! CESS! OF! DEEEEEATH!" as their heads blow backwards and skin slowly peels away from their face as a result of the power that simply reciting the lyrics musters. I find it impossible to listen to a band like Witchaven and not struggle to quell the urge to find the nearest living thing and kill it. They play with a rare power, a rare force that can command the listener to do whatever the band pleases, and they never have to even speak the command, you just do it.

Totalitarian State of War is black/thrash at it's most primal. Witchaven is the kind of band that wakes up every morning and eats freshly ground uncooked lamb for breakfast. With the blood still dripping from their jaws they exit their doom fortress and start axe murdering the local wildlife, and soon after that they jump on their V666 Murdercycles and ride a badass wheelie all the way to the Vatican where they sacrifice one priest every day in the brazen bull. Their days climax with a blasphemous orgy complete with mutilation and vorarephilia to the soundtrack of Bestial Mockery. What I'm trying to say is that they are bloody bestial ass rape raw and carry themselves on pure, undiluted attitude. Even tracks where they aren't running on all cylinders like the midpaced "Whispers in the Wind" completely destroy. "Circle of Shadows" and "Century of Fire" are probably the fastest outright tracks on display (and are unsurprisingly two of the best), but no track feels like a wasted spot. The production quality varies from track to track due to this actually being a compilation as opposed to a full length album, so it can be somewhat frustrating when listening from front to back. Songs like "Black Thrash Assault" and "Circle of Shadows" sound really professional (by black/thrash standards) while "Screams in the Night" sounds like it was recorded on a cell phone.

Instrumentally, this really isn't all that much to write home about. There aren't insanely fast blast beats nor virtuosic guitar acrobatics, but these California bred heathens play with a fresh intensity and passion that I find sorely lacking in most thrash based acts from the west coast. Instead of utilizing the perplexingly popular mindset of "Know what's awesome? Exodus. We should do that", they go for a mission along the lines of "Know what's awesome? Sabbat. We should try to be even better". And while they don't yet have the legacy of the Japanese Leather Thong Warriors, they play music of a similar style and equal viciousness, possibly even surpassing it at times. They way I see it, Totalitarian State of War wipes any trace of doubt away from the mind of the listener. The fact that Witchaven is still unsigned completely baffles me, as Hells Headbangers or Nuclear War Now! should definitely jump on a band of this style and quality. I believe they are bound for underground infamy based purely on the fury of the music. No frills, no gimmicks, just blasphemous, raw, neckbreaking attitude.

RATING - 89%