Hail and praise Lucifer for this gift of astoundingly high quality Black Metal exploding from my overjoyed speakers! For the last few years it has been Black Metal’s Norwegian pioneers carrying the torch of the genre largely by themselves. Well, 1349 (featuring Satyricon skin-basher Frost on drums) have completely resurrected that feeling of old by invoking the dark spirits of early ’90s Immortal and Satyricon. The speed is blazing, the vocals pure gravel, and it warms my evil soul so to see actual riffs return to the attack. Cheers to Candlelight, who have not only given Death Metal legends Dismember new life, but may have found the band to ignite the return. The return of darkness and evil!

When I told Ray I’d never heard Hellwitch, he looked at me as if I had just farted in his dinner (spray fart). Assuring me that I was in fact a poser for not recognizing the glory and importance of these influential forefathers, who apparently much like MacGuyver, created Death Metal in 1984 using a cotton swab and an old antenna. Well, I can still count the number of times my endeared mentor has been wrong on one hand, but as it turns out, I had not heard these guys for a reason. I hope the Necrowarlord can forgive me, but I wonder if his fondness for this band isn’t more directly tied to the era of their arrival rather than the actual material. (You see kids, Metalheads, or just white guys in general, could actually get laid in the ’80s.) What I’m hearing is some pretty dated Thrash here. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely not bad, and for its time it’s pretty god damn extreme, but it’s nothing I haven’t heard Exodus, Kreator, and Destruction do 1,000 times better, and by today’s standards it sounds plain tired. Still, diehard fans of Hellwitch will need this reissue more than their oxygen tanks, as it is loaded with rare demo tracks and rehearsals, and it serves as a proper history lesson for posers like me.

I’m sure that it’s no surprise to any fans of musical extremity that Ingrowing has delivered yet another brutal slab of intense Grind. These guys concentrate on sonically pummeling the listener into paste with their speed and ferocity, and yet have little trouble simultaneously creating memorable songs.

This album should be called Satanik Hearing Damage because that’s exactly what it is. Satanik Terrorism has my nomination for the absolutely worst production on a Black Metal album ever. After a rather standard keyboard intro, the torture begins. I don’t mean that in a good way, either. In a very literal sense, all you hear is the sound of someone hitting a cymbal over and over again. Every now and then, you hear a riff or a transition, but 99% of the time, all you’re hearing is this constant “ding-ding-ding-ding-ding” of said cymbal being whacked. It quite literally drowns out just about everything else. The guitar parts could be composed of one single chord being played over and over again and you’d never fucking know it because you can’t make out any chord changes underneath the barrage of “dings.” Who the fuck produced this and why? Someone spent a bunch of money recording and pressing this abomination and nobody had the brains to stop and say, “hey, maybe it would be better if we lowered that one particular cymbal a bit so we can hear the guitar (or anything else, for that matter)?” You would get better use out of your money by wiping your ass with it.

Sure, it’s the State most responsible for WW3, but Florida is still a fertile breeding ground for Death Metal. Not too many of the original core of the Floridian Death uprising can say they’ve held their ground quite like Monstrosity. How many bands could lose a vocalist like George Fisher and get better? This is right up there with In Dark Purity as a contender for their best album. If every Death Metal band could be this brutal and this technical without sacrificing any catchiness, hell, cunts might even like the shit. (No offense to the 16 cool chicks currently alive.) Thank you, Monstrosity. Keep kicking that ass.

One of the oldest bands from the second wave of Black Metal, Marduk has always been one of those groups that has not only set the standards for the genre but also maintained a standard of quality that is hard to match. This album skirts the edges of both Panzer Division Marduk and their last outing, La Grande Danse Macabre, in that there are elements of both LPs not only on the album, but in each individual song. Panzer… was an all-out speed attack that never stopped nor did it slow down until the last song ended. La Grande Danse Macabre was more melodic and slower. World Funeral has speed, power and brutality to spare, but it also has some melodic bits, heavier stuff and all of it is still consistent with Marduk’s sound. Add Legion’s corrosive vocals and you have a package that is sure to peel the paint from your walls and the flesh from your bones. I still think that Legion most resembles the legendary Mayhem vocalist, Dead, when it comes to vocal style and sound. Needless to say, this album is guaranteed to cause whiplash, concussions and the worship of our Lord and Master SATAN!!!

You really have to be a die-hard fan of Marduk to want to shell out any money for a two-song CD-single that only contains one non-album track. Granted, it is a Possessed cover. This MCD is a teaser for the new album, World Funeral, also to be released on Regain Records (at the time of this review, it isn’t out yet). Musically, this single is hard to judge. The one track that is from the album (“Hearse”) sort of blends the balls-out chaos of Panzer Division Marduk with the more melodic attack of albums such as Heaven Shall Burn… When We Are Gathered or Le Grande Danse Macabre. When things get melodic, the track fucking rips. When the chaotic shit gets going, the memorability of the song almost disappears amidst the grinding riffs and pounding drums. As before, Legion’s voice is evil as fucking Hell and about as abrasive as getting your face rammed into an industrial-strength sanding machine. The Possessed cover, “Phantasm,” is almost spot-on with the original. I love both Marduk and Possessed, so the prospect of hearing Marduk covering Possessed was enough to get me to shell out the cash for this. After listening to this, I’m really interested in hearing what the new album is going to sound like.

Grimfist (featuring members of Immortal and Gorelord) is a band with a few good ideas and a couple of not-so-great ones, with the results sadly ending up mostly in the middle of the road. The intentions are respectable, the blending of Thrash, Death and Black Metal, and none of the riffs are terrible, but for whatever reason the effort overall sounds contrived. The album’s most intense surges usually occur when the grueling Death vocals are employed, yet a generous portion of these riffs sounded better in the late ’80s/early ’90s when they were first written. Perhaps my hopes were just too high? It’s hard to believe a band with such borrowed tactics and unintelligent lyrics can draw comparisons to Marduk, Immolation, and Immortal. I was born in the morning, but it wasn’t yesterday morning.

HOLY SHIT!! Am I fucking dreaming? Can this really be this cool? Am I really listening to the first band to successfully mix bludgeoning Gore-Grind with raw Black Metal? If I am dreaming, for once do the decent thing and let me die in my sleep. This is just amazing. It is honestly like listening to Carcass, Bathory, Exhumed, Marduk, Haemorrhage, Destroyer 666, Squash Bowels, Impaled Nazarene, and Nasum all in one! I just came!! The only flaws I can find, and believe me I had to dig deep, are a sickeningly disturbing layout (I just hope that piss was digital), and a pretty shaky understanding of English which leads to confusing song titles and lyrics. That’s it, two minor, superficial flaws that really take nothing away from a splendidly deranged listening experience. Any connoisseur of musical extremity’s collection is simply incomplete without the Menses Exorcism. Favorites: “Cock Control,” “Cummand & Cuntquer,” “Menstrua,” and “The Menses Exorcist.”