SilentScream213 Blasphemy released the first War Metal album in 1990 by mixing Black Metal’s thin production and dissonant riffing with mid tempo sections of meaty Death Metal and deeper growls akin to the later genre. Aside from the invention of a new subgenre, it’s really nothing special. The music is fine quality with some great riffs and impressive solos, the production is quite awful with drums obscuring most of it at times, and the whole package is relatively average.

It’s unfortunate how low the guitars are in the mix. I feel that with a better production job this album could be great, but the riffing here is about as audible as bass on a Grindcore album. An enjoyable album for a pure bestial mess of aggression, but no masterpiece.

siLLy puPPy BLASPHEMY may have been one of the more influential bands of the early years of extreme metal by crafting the first example of what would be called war metal, war black metal or bestial black metal but they were hardly the most prolific band around. The band formed all the way back in 1984 in Vancouver, BC, Canada but didn’t even release the first demo until 1989 and the debut album “Fallen Angel Of Doom” until 1990. It took three years to record the followup GODS OF WAR and then it was only slightly over 20 minutes long. All re-releases have included the demo “Blood Upon The Altar” tagged to the end to make it a full-album’s length.

GODS OF WAR doesn’t deviate too much from what was laid down on the debut but did find a new bassist joining Satan’s team with Ace Gustapo Necrosleezer and Vaginal Commands. As far as i know i think BLASPHEMY initiated this trend of ridiculous stage names within black metal and the core metal subs that would catch on. One of the main reasons for a delay in a sophomore release was the souring of relations with the Wild Records label which despite “Fallen Angel Of Doom” selling fairly well, failed to pay any royalties to the band for it. The band sought out a new label and ended up on the well established Osmose that had already found success with bands like Samuel, Massacre, Immortal and Pan.Thy.Monium.

Focusing more on the grindcore influences of Repulsion and the hardcore punk of Discharge, BLASPHEMY crank out an even more intense slap in the face of aggression with GODS OF WAR. As succinct as the playing time is the album runs on full throttle for its brief 20 mintute tirade. The guitar riffs are on fire as they whiz up and down the scales with Morbid Angel inspired squealing solos and heavier percussive drive that makes GODS OF WAR sound like a true soundtrack for the battle field. Nocturnal Grave Desecrator and Black Winds’ guttural growls are more diverse this time around despite never approaching intelligible and the overall song structures are more varied with slow churning doom riffs finding a place amongst the buzzsaw down tuned chugging riffs.

Just as they were getting started, BLASPHEMY took a hiatus in 1994 and wouldn’t regroup until 1999. The band has always been a bit unusual but remained so for even as they got back together have still never released another studio album to date, however they have released a few live albums as well as a couple more demos. GODS OF WAR takes BLASPHEMY to the next step but it’s rather disappointing that it was cut off in the middle of the album and then never has found resolution. Perhaps it all lends an air of mystery around the band that debuted the wonderful world of war metal, which i guess is fitting since the music is just as unstable and ready to collapse under its own weight. Nevertheless, GODS OF WAR is the perfect followup even if it’s way too short.

siLLy puPPy The fiery pits where the earliest black metal bands were forged were sparing in their early yields of fledgling bands developing the style that didn’t quite scratch the itch on Venom’s earliest recordings. While Scandinavia was the hotbed of second wave black metal taking the world by storm with Bathory and Mayhem crafting the earliest known sounds to be called true black metal, half the world away in Vancouver, BC, Canada another band had its hand in crafting its own cacophonous sonic terror. BLASPHEMY formed all the way back in 1984 but wouldn’t release the first demo “Blood Upon The Altar” until 1989. While Bathory and Mayhem were responsible for unleashing the first black metal recordings onto an unsuspecting world, BLASPHEMY was still in its embryonic stage gestating the most brutal and aggressive noisefest possible.

The wait was worth it since BLASPHEMY crafted the earliest sounds that would be deemed war metal (also known as war black metal or bestial black metal). This band took the aggressive, the cacophonous and the chaotic to even more extreme levels by following in the footsteps of some of the 80s most intense metal bands like Sodom and Possessed along with early grindcore like Repulsion as well as the death metal sounds of Autopsy, Sarcófago and early Sepultura. After the demo was released BLASPHEMY followed up with the debut FALLEN ANGEL OF DOOM the next year with cover art so vile and blasphemous that the style of a war metal bands to come would copy the tricolor schematic of black, white and red with monstrous depictions of Satanic beasts and anti-Christian themes. And according to Terrorizer magazine, this album is heavier than the entire forests of Canada falling on your big toe.

BLASPHEMY was a quartet and donned unusual Gwar-like personas with terrifying stage names like Black Hearts of Damnation and Impurity (drums), Nocturnal Grave Desecrator and Black Winds (bass, lead vocals), Traditional Sodomizer of the Goddess of Perversity (rhythm guitars, backing vocals) and the crazed lead guitarist Caller Of The Storms who happened to be one of the very few black guitarists who would forsake the world of funk and hip hop and join the ranks of the noisiest legion of sonic terrorists the early 90s had to offer in the world of black metal. With subject matter steeped in Satanism and demonology, BLASPHEMY became one of the most revered bands in the underground extreme metal scene and was signed to the Wild Rags label while touring the US.

FALLEN ANGEL OF DOOM is a short blast in the hellfire pits of early war metal with surreal intro effects that lead into down-tuned hellish fury that finds frenetic power chords, blastbeat percussion and low guttural growls coalescing into distorted monstrous dinfests with punk infused brevity. Breaking out the squealing solos, Caller Of The Storms displays how the war metal segment at the black metal store has much more in common with old school death metal than Scandinavian contemporaries that utilized trebly lo-fi tremolo picking as the primary means of expression. At the time this debut album was released, BLASPHEMY had no competition in the war metal but soon their influence would spread far and wide with bands like Beherit, Archgoat and Impaled Nazarene quickly joining the deathened black metal pits from whence this vile din of perversity found life.

Like many other artists who develop a new style, BLASPHEMY’s debut FALLEN ANGEL OF DOOM has become a classic for its infidel influences on the entire extreme metal scene that would follow. Despite its classic status the album wasn’t rereleased for over a decade and finally found new life in 2007 on the Nuclear War Now! label. While not the best example that black metal has to offer, the incessant deathened core influences that BLASPHEMY mashed into the second wave black metal sounds are staggering and about as extreme and sacrilegious as music could get in 1990, a year when both black metal and death metal were barely out of the cradle. Not my favorite but still a classic.

siLLy puPPy In the 80s when the Satanic bowels of hell were giving birth to deformed fetuses only partially infused with slimy maggoty life, they were endowed with a spark of pure evil which gave them the impetus to create massive quantities of musical mayhem in the name of hate of religion, death, pain and misanthropy. Such creatures became the early nascent forms of black metal such as Celtic Frost, early Bathory and Mayhem. But some were irradiated by melted down nuclear reactors and Satanic sludge that mutated them into maniacal creatures so vile and repugnant that they took pure musical aggression where it had never gone before.

True musical bleakness was born in the fire pits of Vancouver, BC with the help of BLASPHEMY which on their first demo / EP release BLOOD UPON THE ALTER is the first fully developed example of war metal, which is a highly aggressive and chaotic type of metal that sounds a lot like death metal in its musical hostility but incorporates the anti Christian philosophies and misanthropic vile of what black metal would become famous for. On this release we hear a typified war metal sound solidly unleashing pure hostility rather than atmosphere much in the same as early black turned thrash bands like Sepultura or Sarcófago. There is a hardcore crust punk brevity to the tracks with occasional high pitched guitar solos.

Unlike most black metal from the second wave onwards that developed a certain template for the sub genre, war metal does not engage in a trebly lo-fi veneer with lightning fast tremolo picking but rather murky, muddy bleakness with emphasis on the bass with tortured vocals more akin to death than the shrieks more familiar with black. While many a black metal band lays the Satanic imagery and lyrics on a bit thick, war metal bands like BLASPHEMY are known for the outrageous and unrelenting over-the-top approach to their darkness. If you like the loudest, crudest and most obnoxious music ever to assault the ear drums then all roads lead back to BLASHPHEMY and their debut release BLOOD UPON THE ALTER, which boldly adopts the imagery and lyrics of Slayer, Mayhem, Possessed, Bathory and others and injects a healthy dose of Satanic steroids to conjure up one massive mess of sonic assault. Check em out if you dare!