If there was a world record attempt at how many times a band could vocalise the word “Satan” on an album I think we would have a winner. I was actually thinking about sitting down and counting, or even inviting people over for a game whereby everyone knocks back a shot each time the dark lord’s name was uttered. Thankfully I realised that would be both very expensive and likely to kill everyone of alcohol poisoning but you get the point. This album is by the Dutch band Heretic and as far as the title is concerned it does just as described being a compilation featuring 8 tracks from sold out ‘Splitting Skulls For Satan’ LP as well as the 7” records ‘Tyrants Of Evil’ and ‘Black Metal Overlords.’ One thing that I noted straight away was the logo as it is a bastardized version of the infamous Beherit one, very clever indeed.
Musically this lot are described as metal, punk and rock and roll which is all very true perhaps the inclusion of the word kvlt might be relevant here as well though. The gnarly chug of ‘Blood and Blasphemy’ rides out with grim backing growls around singer Thomas Goat who does a very good rasping job throughout the album Breathing the air of Lucifer, having lives blessed by Satan and raping angels is all what songs such as ‘I Bring Chaos’ are all about. It is incredibly tongue in cheek and frankly daft and dumb as well but it is snappy, catchy and fun with it. Mindless head banging and drinking strong beer is virtually mandatory to these cloven hoofed anthems. There are some nice Viking sounding chants, evil cackles and a beefy death grunt thrown into ‘Unholy Rights’ the music is often peppered with dramatic sound effects too keeping it interesting despite the relative simplicity of the riffing. If it were not for such trappings the repetitive nature of the playing and the cod lyrics would be a tad much after a while. There is luckily things like the “getting something delicate caught in the zipper” scream at the start of ‘We Will Destroy’ to keep you amused. ‘Hellfire Satanist’ is one of the catchiest numbers here and has a punk laden vibe about it, apparently the band gave this one away at concerts but I am not sure if this means theirs or someone else’s as they drunkenly staggered around the crowd.
There is not much more to be said here, if you love Satan, beer and grimy denim covered in obscure patches this ones for you. It’s a bit like the musical equivalent of a film where you are told to leave your brain at the door but there is nothing wrong with that every so often.
http://www.myspace.com/hereticmaniacs
