If you remember that old song “Mama, Don’t let your babies grow up to be Satanists,” then you’ll have an idea about the message conveyed on Nocturnal Blood’s Devastated Graves – The Morbid Celebration. Well, except for the “don’t” part. The work of a lone (like in the sense of “lone gunman”) Californian, this half-hour sonic treatise on the abyss is so quintessentially Hells Headbangers it’s ridiculous. In other words, the loyal legions will love it a little too much and the rest will stand with mouth agape just before stumbling through the bathroom door to rid themselves of the day’s sustenance.

Specifically, Devastated Graves – The Morbid Celebration is an ugly, blood stained, and filthy affair of blasting black and death metal that recalls a who’s who of the South American barbarian hordes (that first Anal Vomit release included), a range of standard bearers like early Beherit, Bathory, Sodom, and Hellhammer, and hints of the swirling maelstroms created by acts like Deiphago. That about covers it and you’ve surely gotten the gist by now, your opinionated complaints about the absence of more apt comparisons falling on deaf ears. Out of the miasma of primal blast beats, reverb-drenched cavernous vocals, and ungodly riff buzzes burst brief solos that alternately sound like mournful cries of the damned and the string-bent, tortuous screams of the sadistic. Aside from the occasional changeup, namely on the downshift to doom/death/Incantation tempo on “Chaos Mass” and the mid-tempo segments of “Ritual Lust,” what you get are a series of Satanic carpet bombing runs and all the death-by-smoke-inhalation you can handle. On a side note, the cymbal work offers a nice touch against the otherwise unrelenting beats.

Forget hygiene, cast aside any conceptions of human decency, and flush the prim and the proper right down the toilet, as Devastated Grave – The Morbid Celebration is truly the work of the Devil. Don’t get your panties in a twist, as nobody said anything about an album of masterpiece proportions. This is merely a bloody good show of deathly putridity and blackened savagery, all wrapped up in Hells Headbangers packaging. As the old saying goes, you can take your middle ground and shove it!

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