By George Archibald
Hailing from Argentina is Bonehammer unveiling their latest release Black Crust Invasion, which was released on September 3rd, 2019.
The band’s music incorporates elements of punk and traditional metal, mixed with black and death metal. The themes on this album range from Pagan rituals, to the occult while giving a nod to 80’s styled horror. They are bringing out the dark emotions from with in themselves when writing, to let the negativity flow as they have been quoted. The band hopes to become an object of desire and evil, while making a making a gash on an already infected scene.
The album kicks off with Dark Pagan Cult, which has a ripping guitar riff to kick off the song. The melodies remind me of 80’s styled traditional metal. The vocalist Odnufak keeps his voice rather low and growling throughout the song. They even play up the old-style horror theme with chanting, and a spoken word section which is like an incantation to end the song.
The track Children of the Lie has more of a black metal feel, with blistering thrash styled guitars and witch howl screams. The drums are quick paced and push the guitars through their grinding pace. The guitar tone is a bit fuzzed out and very dirty on the track. Think early black metal like Burzam and Mayhem with a bit of Satyricon mixed in.
Overall Black Crust Invasion is a nod to older styled metal. The recording sounds low fi but better quality than most black metal bands’ origin albums. The guitar work is by far the best thing on the album, as it gives quite a variety; from a buzzsaw grind, to sweet melodic riffs scattered along the record. The vocalist tries to give the listener a wide range of variety from growls, and spoken word, to screeches and high screams. The drums are on time and keep on track with the guitar work, ranging and tempo and aggression.
The bass gets lost in the mix unfortunately. If I was to critique this album, I think the vocalist should limit his vocal choices to only one and work on doing that well. He switches up continuously, and it sounds sloppy in some sections of the songs, in other songs it doesn’t seem his style choice fits for certain parts. For a South American band, the production quality is fair for this genre of music.
This album is now available on Spotify for streaming, and is for fans of Bathory, Venom, Hellhammer, Discharge, and Amebix.