ALBUM REVIEW: The Black Sorcery – Wolven Degrade

Here I review the second full length album from Canadian War Metal band THE BLACK SORCERY! Set for release on March 28th via Krucyator Productions. Appellation Noise Records will be releasing the album on vinyl.

1. War Fangs opens us with sampling of warfare that certainly sets the harsh and bleak emotion for the album along with beautiful ambience and a wolf howl. A great way to set in with simplicity but effectiveness.
2. Intolerance Enthrone begins the lo-fi assault of growled vocals over chaotic drums and blistering guitars. The snarling descends into guitar shredding with a storming aggression to the music. This is some hideously harsh War Metal full of violence and total frenzy. Production is typically low in quality but that adds to the raw character of the genre. The attack of the full band is absolutely unrelenting and totally brutal. A fantastic, gurgling start.
3. Putrescent Infected falls into more slamming barrages, hammered drums, grisly riffs and grunted vocals. The in-your-face, whiplash, headbanging morbidity of the music is fiercely punishing with little respite, just total warfare and noise. This track is another than really captures the War Metal spirit with plenty of primitive, caveman style riffs and sloppy structures filled with pure brutality and a barbaric level of aggression, this may sound negative but for me that is how this music should be.
4. The Crone fades in with speedy riffs, hammering drums and grotesque screams. Full pace insanity soon kicks back in with the freighter force of the whole band throwing us into cataclysmic, odious and chaotic walls of grisly noise. The thunderous roars of the vocalist over grinding riffs and ludicrously fast drums sounds glorious, taking no prisoners, just total violence. Some of the screams in the later part of the song really seem like they scrape in a beautifully ugly manner. Another really excellent track.
5. Body Coffin Betrayal drives out more Archgoat style riffing and blasts that gruesomely attacks the listener with astonishingly crushing and decimating material. The hammering bestiality of the music is horrifically intense and penetratingly dark with nothing held back. This is a case of simplicity being used to create something brooding with hatred. There is a really epic groove to this song too. Absolutely fantastic.
6. Wolven Degrade slowly thunders into fruition with stomping chords and kick drums, coated in the harsh snarls of the vocalist. This track has a more doomy but still totally warfare-ridden start to it, more in the vein of Goatlord. Soon things pick up into ferocity of the highest order once again. The dual use of high screams and growls sounds killer as does the blisteringly shredded out guitar solo. A really panicking piece of extremity.
7. Sawed Strings And The Fall Of A Marionette slams back into brutish hatefulness with spiteful drums and more grinding guitar mania. The tormentingly hellish vocals are definitely in the foreground of the mix, truly adding a real ugliness that suits the barbaric instrumentals perfectly. The jackhammer snare drum use is fantastically consistent, allowing no rest to the listener and punctuating the macabre tremolo riffs perfectly. Another blistering and frenzied shred is added to the track, something the band use enough but not too much to become obnoxious. Brilliant.
8. Angry Spit Of The Witches Piss grinds out more bestial hell noise with clearer guitar riffs that sound like a storm of static, insane blast beats and grotesque vocals. The deathly assaults that the band have thrown us with total consistency and that are filled with energy have been unrelentingly wonderful, this song is no exception. Primal aggression is at an all time high with this piece of violent, high-speed mastery. The lower pitch of the release is really upheaving and I think this track represents that beautifully. Great stuff.
9. Worse Still The Fog Of Man Settles slowly churns out doomy riffs, laid back cymbal crashes and whammy madness, all bound with the odious growls of the vocalist. Soon things descend back into cascading depravity and frenzy with macabre instrumentals and monstrous vocals. I loved the blistering guitar shredding too. The momentum is as furious as the soundscapes themselves, a totally monolithic piece of bestial warfare, glorious.
10. Revelation Of The Dark Succumbing sets into groovy grinding riffs once more, hammering out one last bout of totally ferocity. Hideous vocals, churning guitars and drum blast battery are, once more, what we get. The final drive of the last track is just one last blistering assault of total hatred and high quality, lo-fi walls of sodomising noise. There is a cavernously convulsive groove to the piece that sounds hideously evil and totally marvellous. A wicked ending to the release.

This release is packed with violence, chaos and the true War Metal spirit. The lower quality in production and primitive songwriting only adds to the brutish barbarism of the genre and its character. A solid addition to the bands abattoir of insanity. My only critique on the music itself is that the guitars weren’t as audible as I would have liked. -8/10