By: Anders

Posted: Nov 29, 2005

Raw and grim black metal, possessing more hate than your usual slab of metal, with the predicate black metal. The band hails from Tasmania and is the work of Jera, who has gotten help with from Jarmed from Nuclear Winter, with the drumming. This is the band's first full length release, which consists of 8 tracks of hatred and despair towards the disease known as humanity.

Noisy compositions, making one feel uncomfortable, forcing one to listen tight to the music, to get it all, blazing a chain of thoughts of life and all there is to it, or what it not should have been. The guitar tone is very raw and ugly, and creates the atmosphere present on the release, cold and eerie riffs which paints the night even darker, while the dim starlight shines upon the desolate earth during the nuclear winter. Nice and misanthropic thoughts the music creates, a great soundtrack to the mind play of dark thinkers. The drumming is simple and noisy, and as a good and very unusual thing, on a simple black metal production, the drums are behind the guitars and vocals, and not in front of them dominating, that's a good feature in my ears, as a dominating spare drum can get annoying.

The cold and harsh vocals are another factor that adds to the eerie and hateful feeling. A raw and harsh scream, full of frustration and hate, one of the ugliest vocals I have heard in a long time, and the perfect compliment to the simple but very effective songwriting.

This album is good all the way through. The band does not give anything to the genre as such, they have chosen a path of dark hatred and misanthropy and deliver it to its full extent, and that demands respect, especially as they also are doing it very good, this is a good and haunting black metal release, as all supporters of real black metal will enjoy. And as a shot across the bow towards so called black metal fans and so called black metal bands, The Black Death delivers the track 'Pestilence', merely a riff, but a cold screeching lead all the way through, simple drumming, not that tight or in patterns as such and an icing vocal on top of it, that's how plain, ugly and simple it can be done.

Rating: 8/10

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