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KORIHOR is a blackened thrash metal band that formed in 1998 in the southern city of Davao, Philippines. The band has released a slew of short EPs, demos and splits and BASTARDO is the only official album release however even it consists of four studio tracks and four live tracks in effect making it more like an EP than album.
While the lineup has shifted a bit over the years on this one it is Sherem (vocals), Obispo (bass), Propeta (drums) and guitars handled by Abhor and Elohim. KORIHOR refers to an anti-Christ in the Book of Mormon and he preached against God and saviors therefore it’s no surprise that the thematic approach of this band is anti-Christianity, darkness, evil and war.
It’s interesting that early blackened extreme metal bands like Hellhammer, Celtic Frost and Bathory employed ample amounts of thrash metal in their nascent sounds but thrash metal and black metal haven’t been the best of friends since those years in the 80s but there have been a few bands such as Aura Noir, Condor, Töxik Death, Deathhammer, Nekromantheon, Infernö, Vornth, Rust and Sauron that have bucked that trend.
KORIHOR pretty much follows these bands in implementing a lo-fi black metal production and raspy vocals and black metal themes with the immediacy and energetic delivery of thrash metal. This lo-fi thrash attack employs excellent musicianship with all those heavy duty palm muting techniques and guitar abuse antics but the overall songwriting technique employs black metal traits which makes an interesting hybrid.
On BASTARDO the band cranks out four studio recordings in lo-fi regalia along with four raging live tracks which evoke an even lower-fi standard embraced in chaos and distortion. The band also sports the complete corpse paint shtick and has fully adopted the Norwegian model of black metal conduct. Overall a decent if not outstanding example of blackened thrash metal but interesting in that KORIHOR emerged from the southernmost island of the Philippines.