Thursday, December 12, 2024
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Label: King Serpent Records

Date: January 21st, 2023

So now we move to another neighboring land of Uruguay. I’m of course talking about Brazil. Well, to come deeper into scene of this largest and the most populous country of South America (and one of the largest and most populous ones on the world) I’d need to spend at least a few months on it – actually as I know it was like that with many states and there’s twenty six of them and federal district. That’s why there’ll be only one review right now. To do that we have to visit a state and city you probably never even heard about, even if Tarasina, capital of Piaui state, has more than 870.000 people. Some of them are of course metalheads and just four of them play in the horde called Victhorian. It existed for nine years and, except for just reviewed stuff, released only one self entitled EP (once it was called MCD since the term EP was reserved only for 7” vinyls) on CD.

I think from the very title of just discussed stuff most of you (if not all) guessed what kind of music we have to do here with. Yes, this is of course black metal. But since black metal has not only one face, then it’ll be the best if you read what I wrote below. Besides I’m not writing this, or any other, review to get you to flush it out and stop reading this after one and a half paragraph. “Jesus Lies” is one more EP and contains only three songs, the third one is recording on some Victhorian gig. But they’re all quite long ones, so stuff released by King Serpent Records on CD more than one year ago (January 21st) and takes almost eighteen minutes. Personally I still call stuff like that MCD. But this is only a question of name, I think (and since I’m as old as I am, then I use old-school and forgotten names).

As I mentioned guys create pure or, as sometimes it calls, true black metal. Well, to be honest I somehow never liked the word – probably because my experiences with bands using it to describe their music was, to say the least, nothing special. I of course know the character and specificity of Black Art, but there’s quite a huge difference between playing primitive, raw music and being a primitive who has no idea how to play their instruments. Fortunately in this case we have definitely to do with this first category. This is easy music, there’s nor too much and even more not too developed riffs, even if they change quite often and absolutely aren’t imprudent or stuff like that. Drumming is as variable as the structure of several songs allows it. So sometimes we have a high speed tempo, sometimes a slow one. Of course there are some passages, but they’re also not too developed as well. But isn’t black metal also, or probably first of all, about creating music emanating evil with the help of simplest possible means of expression? Vocal is, even if I somehow hate this word, typical black metal growling, except “King” where clean voice dominates.

Well, if someone else would write this review, then you’d read some names of well-known hordes just right now. But this is written by me, so you can only dream about that and your dream will never come true. This is first of all about Norwegian then for example German school of playing black metal, even if I also hear some American bands’ influences. Anyways, our Brazilian friends create a way of unholy music I like the most. I won’t repeat here the description of their creativity. Instead I’ll just recommend this stuff. So grab “Jesus Lies” straight away! Date of release can make it sold out already, but you’ll never know this if you don’t contact the band or label, right? And in my opinion there’s no problem it’s only three tracks over here. I mean, I of course would like to listen even longer to this music. But we can always use “repeat” on CD-player and the problem is solved. Especially even if this is not complicated creativity, created with help of, as I already wrote before, simplest possible means of expression at the same time developed enough to not get you bored even after a few times back-to-back. Unfortunately I have to stop doing that now to move to another band and another review.

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I was born quite a long time ago in Poland (1974) to support the scene and keep metal flames away, even though I officially started to listen to metal at age of 13. Few years later (4, maybe 5) I decided to edit my own fanzine and this adventure lasted over years. Then, after graduating journalism, I wrote reviews, made interviews and live reports for some magazines. I moved to Sweden and my journey continued. Finally I became a part of the Abaddon team, where I'll stay until the last breath!!! I'd like to develop together with this magazine.