Review by Paul Castles
Underground label Cold Raw Records are behind a handful of interesting new releases. Operating at the more extreme end of the metal family there’s some obscure offerings wrapped in a shroud of desecrated darkness. Paul Castles comes blinking into the light having been locked away with two buckets brimming with bile from the label:
- Black Anal Goat Vomit – Hell
- Onethium – Foreshadowing Oblivion
Black Anal Goat Vomit – Hell
Release date: 28 February 2014
Well this sounds like fun! Quite clearly this is the kind of stuff that if most people bumped into on a dark night in a dirty alley they’d turn on their heels and get the hell out. Without so much as a ‘Good Evening’. Fortunately for these antipodean aggressors there are still a few of us around prepared to dance with the devil. Hell is the nearest we’ll get to that for now.
Black Anal Goat Vomit – whose logo by the way is suitably encrypted to make it practically indecipherable – are the black metal grandees of Australia and this release will do their fearsome reputation no harm, both at home and in the northern hemisphere. They’re not out to make friends with the local Sunday school teacher with song titles such as ‘Funeral Masturbation’ and ‘Urinal Baptism’. In fact songs is probably overstating the content of this 30-minute ride into the bowels of a putrid cesspit. BAGV provide a sonic soundtrack with more jagged edges than a broken bottle of Newky Brown.
It’s challenging, disturbing and uncomfortable. But this misanthropic mayhem – which in places resembles early black metal warlords such as Burzum and Bathory – has an irresistible edge to it that makes it compelling in its own perverted way. With barely human cries struggling to be heard above the parapet of an almost apocalyptic aural nightmare, the sounds of worlds colliding is occasionally softened by some melodic structures.
They offer some respite when they break through the chaos but only the damaged and the deranged will take comfort from this release. With a run of just 66 copies this is another obscure pearl from the Cold Raw Records wardrobe.
8 out of 10
Track Listing:
- Ngalyod
- Funeral Masturbation
- Halo of Shit
- You Came To Me Like The Smell of an Open C*nt
- Urinal Baptism
- Demons in the Sky
- Gods Prison
Onethium – Foreshadowing Oblivion
Release date: 8 February 2014
The state of Utah is notable for many things, perhaps most notably as being the Mormon capital of the United States. With their reluctance to acknowledge the modern world, this community live a spartan, and yet in many ways admirable life, among the plains of Utah. It’s probably a reasonable assumption to suggest that their near neighbours Onethium haven’t been round for dinner.
The blackened death metal outfit has just released their debut full length album, via Cold Raw Records, and with its blasphemous Satan rallying content it’s safe to assume Middle America – let alone the Mormon community – won’t be greeting this release with open arms.
Foreshadowing Oblivion was a two-man recording with Nokturhn Archahl on bass and Draven Graves on vocals and guitar. I believe a drummer is now on board. These eleven tracks are pretty feral and the production is rougher than a piece of sandpaper. In most reviews that would sound the death-knell although when you’re dealing with black metal it’s almost a compliment. Certainly tracks such as ‘Autopsy Of An Innocent’ have a real jagged edge and a defiant vocal delivery. At times, such as on ‘The Turning’ Onethium are enveloped in a filthy ambient wall of sound which sets a barrier up that is almost impenetrable.
6 out of 10
Track listing:
- Shemhamforash
- Wrath Of Nokturhn
- Autopsy Of An Innocent
- Suicide
- Necromancy
- The Turning
- Bloodlust
- All Is Black
- Rain Of Terror
- Perish The Thought
- Blissful Undeath
