Ghouls of the Endless Night 2011

"Forget about technical, progressive and melodic metal! Bastard Priest's "Ghouls of the Endless Night" is an onslaught of all out old school Swedish death metal - with old school simple shreddy solos, short and intense tracks and loads of influence from black thrash.

Actually, Bastard Priest manage to - through distorting their guitars ti the nthe degree to sound even dirtier and rawer than the original Stockholm sound. Moreover, focusing on aggression and energy, rather than technicality, the music on this album is kept at a comfortably low level of complexity. Drawing on black thrash, old school death metal and, quite extensively, on crust punk, Bastard Priest's approach to extreme metal emphasizes the power of simplicity, the primitive but powerful riffage really speaks for itself. for instance, there are no blastbeats on this album, because - well - they're not really necessary. The fastest track on the album is the aptly titled 'Enormous Thunder of the End' which is slightly reminiscent of early Sepultural, gets nowhere near the velocity of blasting modern death metal - yet, it definitely rivals moder ndeath metal in terms of pure aggression.

As mentioned, crust punk figures quite prominently on this album, which means that there is a lot of d-beating to be heard as in the title track and in 'Fucking Slaughter' which is basically an all out crust punk track. I quite like the deployment of d-beating and other crust elements, because they really add to the energy and aggression that are so central to this album.

It's dirty. It's primitive. It's raw. It's aggressive. It rocks! Fans of old school Swedish death metal should definitely check out "Ghouls of the Endless Night" - it might also appeal to fans of crossover acts like The Accüsed as well as crust and hardcore acts like Amebix, Discharge, The Exploited, Extreme Noise Terror and Nuclear Death Terror.

(review originally posted at seaoftranquility.org)"