Holy fuckin’ hell, this release is certainly up there in the category of “angriest music I’ve ever heard.”  The Black Sorcery is a Canadian quintet that plays a ghoulish, beyond foul hybrid of blackened death/grind with lurching sludge influences cropping up from time to time.  Even when the music does slow its unhinged ass down it never bothers with melody.  Sure, there’s catchy parts but melody, hah, fuck you…you ain’t gettin’ any of that you underserving bastards and bitches!  The Beast spake Death from Above is the 8 track debut and man it hates every breathing thing on the planet.  It hates me.  I’m surprised it even let me write this review.

“Ancient Dialects of Wind” is the glorious result of standing outside in a thunderstorm of acid rain with your mouth gleefully open.  It’s the soundtrack to skin blisters burstin’, open sores seepin’ and rubbin’ salt in every wound for fun.  Ruthless twin guitars rip through lightspeed picking and anti-melody scathe with hog-slopped, fatter than a boatful of lard grinding riffs and death metal thickness ramming into black metal’s atmospheric chording patterns as drums blast and double-bass explodes for a fucking overpowering assault.  The bass is in there somewhere but everything is swallowed by a maw of gaping distortion that eats time itself.  Vocalist Lörd Matzigkeitus has a sinking, toilet-flush growl as his lead style but he also allows blood-curdling, higher pitch screams to pour out onto the floor like the blood congealment from an abdomen leaking gore; an injury it received during a vicious kitchen knife accident.  I purposefully lied to surprise everyone because the mid-section of the song is kinda surprising; a church caving, gothic keyboard line enters midway through and conjures some haunting atmosphere though the respite is short lived.  The riffs return with a vengeance and they’re dissected in a bladestorm of vicious, noise-torn soloing that’s evil and oppressing as Hell.  Even when those aforementioned synths enter they are suffocated with some godless sludge riffs that stamp out any traces and sources of light.

The pummeling, stop/start kick drum thuds from Reaver and a radioactive, ultra-thick death metal riff open up “Traitor Bomb Threat” with enough bad moods to send a psychologist and his entire office of colleagues to the couch.  Parageist and Ghast’s guitars rampage up and down the fretboard in classic, old school patterns played with faster than typical speed and a lot more density than most.  Drums blast and double-pound, tearing your brain with a slicing motion that cuts from cerebellum to frontal lobe as the putrid vocal bile corrodes skin upon the slightest impact.  Deeper, slower tempo runs keep the death metal quotient high but they are quickly offset by teetering blasts.  A less than 10 second break of sludge slop and a feedback blasted squeal drone outro are the only forays into slower pacing in the entire track.  The rotten “Seizures” employs diseased, gravity-anchored crawl riffs in the vein of Celtic Frost, Incantation and Autopsy but goes on a mental ward, straight-jacketed speed rampage thereafter with some exceptionally bleak death chugs and weirdo black/grind fury strengthening the mix even further.  The power chord sleaze riff at 2:52 is one of the best slug splatter stomps on the entire record.  “Frost Vein” is in encrusted in the amber of another violent push/pull lead-off that contemplates choppy, doom-y weight.  Merciless death churns and roach spewing blackened grind follow with the aforementioned sloth-crumble sometimes returning to give the insanity gristly, highly memorable riffage.  They try their hands later on at the same kind of sluggard vibe but coat the guitar tonality in Norwegian permafrost.  Besides the ridiculous death/black vocal malice there’s what sounds like the singer making the howl of a wounded, dying wolf or that’s a sample…it’s scary for fuckin’ sure and sounds like it directly flows into his varicose puking but…what the fuck is that thing?

A palm-muted, spiraling death groove unfolds at a rancid mid-tempo but is rendered dizzying by the blast-speed drums during “Circling the Drain’s” goliath killin’ build-up.  Afflicted verbal carnage erupts over icy tremolo with near lead guitar jabs puncturing through the distorted disgust as if they are fighting from their life as to not drown in freezing waters below a sheet of polar ice.  The crusty, punk-leaned guitar-ballast that signals “Splintered Glass Arsenal’s” arrival is a tangible attack that’s pure crust in its delivery but don’t expect the blackened d-beat that several bands reach for because the destructive blasting, smeary mind-bending axe workouts and the lecherous vocal turns are deranged metal all the way.  Later the speed-limit destroying deviance warps to a volatile death/doom riff backed with sloppy spitballs of double-kick, a freaky single-note keyboard drone and the general musical warfare that you’d expect to hear while Heaven’s dominion is being brought down by the devil’s army.  “Incursion” might just be the album’s heaviest, angriest and fastest track…that’s really fuckin’ saying something there and closer “Helgeist” varies its megalomania thanks to a few gurgling death metal slams and a lengthy outro where the lead guitar is distinctively livened up in shredding, damn close to melodic (though I’m still not so sure if I want to use, thaaaaat word) riff wind-ups.

The Black Sorcery is a fucked up band and The Beast spake Death from Above is a fucked up record.  If the music you like needs the words “tuneful” or “pretty” or “harmonic” and other similar descriptors attached, you won’t want to come within 10,000 miles of this full-length atrocity.  There’s killer riffs and great songwriting on this sucker though with even enough song distinction happening that means I can tell you one track from another.  I can get down on sheer filth as much as I can get down on a good song and The Black Sorcery certainly fits the bill of quality when it comes to the sheer filth that I indulge in quite frequently.  Highly recommended for sicko death/grind/black/sludge freaks though with the disclaimer of “not for the meek” a necessary addition to the closing of this review.

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