Label: Nigra Mors

Date: January 7th, 2024

Quite a fruitful collective, “Negro Círculo Minhoto”, gives unto this world another split with strictly limited run of just fifty copies of this digipack. Two obscure bands tied together by their origin as well as the morbid, ghoulish, otherworldly soundscape.

I cannot recollect if I wrote about Ritual Of Turture (also somewhere referred to as ROT) before. This one-man band performs a rather minimalistic drone doom metal. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing here apart of the heavily distorted guitar, throbbing its way through the piles of putrid human remains. It’s the best description I can give you, since glacially slow tempo pulsates throughout these four tracks and the topics covered in the titles (since there is no singing) revolve around all sorts of gore related subjects. Not that it’s a surprise, given the band’s moniker.

Anyway, that’s all I can honestly say about Ritual Of Torture. I’m far from an expert in the genre, nor have I ever been a big fan of it. To me, it always seemed to be overly ritualistic (see what I did there?) type of sound, but those rituals are far from being my cups of blood.

On the other hand, VRK is much more along my alley. A crust fueled, raw black metal, thumping around the nuclear wasteland. Then again, the second song on their part of the split, “Mundo de Merda” slows down agonizingly, prior to just a few seconds of super-fast, grinding finale. Something similar happens again in “La Jetee” and it is there that you can definitely find a connection between these two musical entities.

Now, what makes VRK’s attempts at enchantment of the audience much more successful to my ears is the usage of drums. Those deep repetitive beats actually give me the creeps and guitars just enhance the feeling.

Of course, VRK is primarily a crust punk black metal outfit, so they best thrive in those sections. Raw, primal and quite convincing at it.

So, to conclude this short review, I’d like to offer this album to the darkest pits of one’s soul. That corner within where you’ve muffled the primordial hatred which, if unleashed, would utter indiscriminate and intolerant violence.

Side effects may include nausea, senseless slaughter, rabies, foaming mouth and, ultimately, incarceration into either a penitentiary or an asylum. Depending on a verdict by a jury of peers.