Well with a name like Blasphemous you know this USBM horde aren’t going to be knocking on your door selling brownies for the Church bake sale…unless those brownies are tasting pretty fucking stale and the church worships the horned one. The good thing with a band like this is that what you see is what you get – there are no surprises in store here whatsoever. What you will find on Bearer Of The Darkest Plagues is ten tracks of blasting blackened death metal which would make a fine soundtrack to a night out killing Christians, raping nuns and sacrificing virgins…before crawling into bed at 4AM ready to wake up with a raging hangover.
So perhaps I shouldn’t bother writing a review, as you’ve probably made your mind up already whether you’ll want this album. Things start off pretty well with a swift introductory passage to ‘When the Dark Storms Surround’ before all hell really lets loose and drums bash away manically with everything else following. Yup, there’s plenty of speed to this album and they don’t make quiet work of it. ‘Among The Wolves’ for example is relentlessly fast and has some furious blackened guitars. Their sound is truly hate-filled and filthy and if I’m being entirely honest also rather messy! ‘Drift Into The Depth Of Suicide’ is one that takes you slowly into the depths with driving riffs and a vocal that is filled with dread, then all of a sudden it speeds up and seems that everything goes along at a different pace and all comes unglued. ‘Path To Our Demise’ is another one that gets off to a slow, ominous start – the riff sounds harsh but the backdrop of blasting drums just doesn’t fit the music at this point.
‘Genocide of the Kingdom’ blasts away furiously and here the drums sound dampened and as filthy as a Christian whore, while the riffs are callous and menacing. Vocals are a kind of deathly drawl you can understand reasonably well and are in the old school DM vein. ‘Raped Upon The Altar’ is, for a while, quite dark and menacing with an ominous bass sound, but then when it gets to the chorus all hurtles ahead full throttle giving the ears a thorough raping. This is all pretty one dimensional stuff and while it’s not the worst thing I’ve heard it doesn’t really do anything for me. Perhaps I’m just not Blasphemous enough? I’ll get my bible.
http://www.myspace.com/blasphemousmetal
