ZWARTKETTERIJ - Cult Of The Necro-Thrasher Digi-CD

Digipack Ltd 300 copies.

Naming an album like this "Cult of the Necro-Thrasher" is on par with "Snakes on a Plane" as far as subtlety and WYSIWYG-ness goes, but it does what it says on the tin. A glance at the back cover should clear up any remaining confusion as to the content: four battle-vested ghouls in Sarcofago-style eye paint overlaid with Olde English-fonted songs with titles like "Cry of the Jackal Child" and "Heavy Metal, Raise Hell!"... this is a throwback to the first wave of black metal and Euro thrash, with the slightest nod or two towards W.A.S.P. and "Shout at the Devil"-era Motley Crue.

That's not to say (despite the band's proclamation of playing '80s metal exclusively) that this sounds like a relic of that era. Clearly Zwartketterij (Dutch for something like "Black Heresy" if my online translator can be trusted) know their second wave BM too, though it is only strongly evoked in one song. It isn't like they have pretended the last 20 years hasn't happened; this is a trip back to the blackened roots of the genre from a contemporary perspective. Zwartketterij have benefitted from having a broad and long-range view of what coalesced into black metal post-1991 and picked the best of the proto-BM sounds to create this ripper: the first Bathory record, King Diamond, Sextrash, Hellhammer, Sodom. Add to this an appropriately hideous rasp, surprisingly strong clear vocals, killer riffs, violent/perverted/ridiculous lyrics, and songwriting skills (an art lost on much BM in the '90s) and this is just about as good as this stuff gets.

Zwartketterij has a achieved a nearly flawless summation of everything black, spiky, decadent, thrashy, Satanic, and, um, fun about black metal from Venom to Mayhem. "Hail the 80's Metal Spirit!!", indeed.