Black Thrashing Genocide

The Phillipines are a large group of islands in the western Pacific. They are a long way away from America, and a long, long way away from Europe, and consequently they are in a different time zone. Judging from this release from Filipino headbangers Maniak (formed from the remnants of black metal band Korihor), the time difference is about 25 years, since Black Thrashing Genocide is firmly rooted in the old-school sound of Venom, Sodom, Hellhammer and early Bathory. Black Thrashing Genocide is the band’s first full-length release, although last year saw a split 7” single with Rammer also released on Grief Foundation, as well as a split CD with Korihor on Deaththrash Armageddon.

After a short, unsettling ambient sound collage intro, which features an excerpt of someone sounding a lot like Anthony Hopkins reading from Aleister Crowley (anybody out there know where this is taken from?), Maniak plunge headlong into ‘Tang Ina Nyo!’, the first, and very possibly only, metal song I've ever heard in Tagalog (the title translates as ‘Fuck It’!). Apart from the exoticism of the language, though, the music offers very little in the way of innovation or surprises. To be fair, Maniak promise ‘Old Black Fucking Thrash’, which they deliver in spades, with thunderous drums, guttural vocals and crude, aggressive guitar leads. The band are playing fit to bust out of their stonewashed stretch jeans and cutoff jackets, the production values are in the gutter, but there’s a certain artless charm and appealing honesty to this retro roughage.

A sample of the lyrics from the title track, which is next up, amply indicates the barbaric pleasures on offer here:

Hymn of thunder and hate
The roar of the goat is to kill
Legion under Satan's command
Thrashing beast from hell
March with us
Raise your iron fist
Bang your skull
It's our time to thrash them all

Subtle it certainly ain’t, but mindless fun it sort of is. There’s nothing amazingly original or memorable here, although the songs ‘Headbangers Of Steel’ and ‘Goatbangers From Hell’ stand out as more convincing than the rest, but there’s plenty of heart, though not much brain, in what Maniak are doing. Maniak’s MySpace page lays down the gauntlet: ‘Only for true maniacs’. You know better than I do whether that means you.

Black Thrashing Genocide is the most wilfully retarded metal release I've heard since Satan Jugend by Belgian blasphemers Goatholocaust was inflicted on me a few years ago. God, bands like this really like to give goats a hard time, don’t they?

This review was originally written for Judas Kiss webzine:
www.judaskissmagazine.co.uk