Diavolos - You Lived Now Die (2015) (Album Review)

Tracklist:

1. Diavolos Rising      
2. Come to Salem      
3. Hail All Evil      
4. Piss in Holy Water      
5. You Lived, Now Die!      
6. Baptized in Vomit     
7. Demonwhore     
8. Curse, Bleed, Die      
9. Totencorpse     
10. Death Metal 

This is the debut album from the recently formed Greek blackened death/thrash band Diavolos. The band is comprised of Tasos Danazoglou (formally of Electric Wizard) on vocals, Nik Angelopoulos and Bill El providing guitar work, Taneli Jarva on bass and K. Savvi on drums.

This album originally escaped my radar upon its release late last year, but thankfully it came to my attention in a hail of bullet belts and leather. This album has a perfect sound that pays homage to early Slayer, early Sodom, Power From Hell, Sarcofago and even Nunslaughter. The band’s sound is often crushingly fast and powerful, and sometimes slow and purposeful, however it is constantly backed by the raw rasping vocals of Tasos Danazoglou, chainsaw guitars and machine gun drum work.

In just 32 minutes this album tears out your eardrums, reaches into your head and replaces your brain with a filth driven, speed spewing engine of absolute evil. This is a perfect album for fans of the golden age of early black, death and thrash who want to relive the moshing glory of old. I cannot recommend this album highly enough.

Support the band, buy their fucking music!

 

Sanguine Relic - Vampyric Will (2015) (Album Review)

Tracklist:

1. Passage I     
2. Passage II      
3. Passage III      
4. Rest I      
5. Passage IV      
6. Passage V      
7. Rest II     
8. Passage VI      
9. Passage VII      
10. Passage III 

This is the first full length from the underground raw black metal project Sanguine Relic which is based in the USA, this is the projects third overall release to date, despite contributing an untitled track to a split earlier this year for their label Defiled Light.

From the moment this album began I thought I must have made a mistake, and rather than listening to an album from 2015 I had somehow put on a broken black metal cassette from 1990. This is some of the rawest most visceral black metal I have heard recorded in a very long time, this album is able to hold its own against almost any raw black metal album from the 90’s with its pounding drums, sawing guitars and screaming vocals that have to be heard to be comprehended.

The production quality on this album is simply non-existent, it must have been recorded by bouncing one cassette into another to build up the albums layers into what ultimately became a stunning opus of cold, dark, raw vampire hatred of the kind we have not heard since the early works of Mütiilation.

I highly recommend this album to any fans of raw black metal, but be aware this is not for everyone.