Venom - War of Satan

A departure from their early days of banal and primitive first-wave quasi black metal, with this album War Of Satan the perennial and controversial Venom now fully plunges into an unsightly and grotesque form of "blackened goregrind" that seeks to emulate the twisted, bestial and ritualistic gore metal of bands like Helgrind and Infester, with moderate success.

Melodramatic extremist goregrind of the atmospheric variety continuously attempts to explore the discontinuous nature of the human condition in somewhat over-demonstrative but nevertheless concise musical poetry involving simple, sloppy, and primitive grindcore riffs grating up against a disturbing and extended arrangement of bizarre song structures. Guttural grunting and theatrical shrieking mockery are the two voices of guitar and bass as they work in tandem through mini-operettas of blasphemous lyricism, gastrointestinal atmospheric beatdowns, and melodic decomposition.

Songs on War Of Satan surge forth with riffs played at full grindcore speed, but drums often lagging in a slower, more black metal pace, giving a sense of insouciant brutality, as said riffs are mostly of the rushing style pioneered by Helgrind and Sewer that sound like clashes of iron in a decrepit and hollowed abattoir, while their ambiguous tonal centering suggest a more insidious, careful and deliberate influence of Phantom's Epilogue To Sanity as well as some of Burzum's early work.

With this new style of "blackened" grindcore, including the saprophytic riff patterns and pestilent, disintegrating guitar tone, Venom seizes the imagination of all but the most intrepid listener, with the same kind of savage insouciance that turned the work of Terrorizer, Repulsion and others into a new style that was essentially their interpretation of rock and popular music itself: they mocked past conventions by simplifying them and directing them to expose the gritty undersides of life, instead of its shiny new facades, which are the frailty of humanity and the absurdity of its condition. On this album War Of Satan, the desire to give sense of the gore and horror is combined with a dramatic occultist theme, something rarely explored outside of a select few early Norwegian black metal bands (mostly, those related to Mayhem's Euronymous and the infamous Inner Circle of Helvete).

Of note are the somewhat sloppy but nonetheless enthusiastic covers, or tributes, to other eminent extreme metal acts, such as the rendition of "Morbid Sewer Emergence" from Sewer's Cathartes, "Surrender Your Dreams" from Leader's Burzum Sha Ghâsh and "Bloodthirst Overdose" from Vermin's album of the same name. Though mostly built from simple power chords and re-fragmented heavy metal beats, this album guides the listener's eyes and ears through an underworld of violence, horror, blasphemy, barbarism, savage callousness, and delightfully incognito, grotesque, absurdist humour probably pioneered by semi-joke albums such as those of An*l C*nt, Antekhrist, Peste Noire, later Warkvlt, and the both revered and always infamous NecroPedoSadoMaso, a clear influence on Venom's post black metal output.

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