Hammer of Antichrist - History of Annihilation

From the string grinding and ritualistic drumming of the intro, I already knew something was different about this band. This was before I had ever heard the term "war metal." At the time, like most others, I passed this release off as "too noisy." I liked it, but I didn't quite know why other than J. Read being one of the most pummeling drummers I'd ever encountered. Now to be fair, I was no stranger to death or black metal at this time. But this album....this fucking album...made me cringe.

Fast forward a couple of months, and I gave this album another chance, with better speakers (headphones to be exact). It was like a whole new experience. The riffs can easily be muddled by poop speakers and I don't believe in an album losing ratings due to poor sound equipment on my part. That aside, with the proper medium, these are some of the heaviest fucking riffs ever created. Forster keeps it simple, yet at the same time follows a riffing structure that's difficult to put to words, but if I had to I'd say a cross between death/doom riffs and black/thrash riffs, all rolled in the same package. Conqueror is not a "Blasphemy clone", they are the next logical step in extremity beyond Blasphemy. The lyrics, while not included in the book, are fairly easy to make out if you're an experienced extreme metal listener. They seem to be loosely strung together ramblings of an apocalyptic cult leader - which is essentially what they are. Read is one of the most insane vocalists in black metal. It truly sounds like the apocalypse is taking place as Read sits atop a large platform with a megaphone and a gas mask, barking prophecy as chaos ensues beneath.

To compare Conqueror to Revenge would be unfair to the uniqueness of Conqueror's sound, save maybe the Superion.Command.Destroy. EP. This is RAW. Turn it up all the way, and it hurts. The demo is also raw, more so even. Personally I prefer the sound on the album, except for Domitor Invictus, where the riffs seem to come out better on the demo. This album has at least 20 distinct moments that make you stop and bang your fucking head, possibly without even realizing it. There are no sleeper tracks on this one. This is the kind of music that sets a bar in extremity. Bands attempting to sound heavier than this will fail 9 times out of 10 and sound like chaotic noise. Deiphago is one of the only bands off the top of my head to make "war metal" that truly sounds like WAR like this album does. I would not recommend this album to someone who is new to extreme metal, and it's my favorite album. It's just, most people won't be ready for it.

So, I bought this CD probably the week it came out, having first heard a lot about this band and then having checked out their split with Black Witchery. I listened to it a few times, and even wrote (and discarded) a review of it for the zine I was writing at the time, which would have been to the effect of: "Why can't you hear the guitars?"

Three years onward (and change), having obligingly purchased the Revenge and Axis of Advance albums (with Conqueror drummer J. Read) and enjoyed those, I had still never really gone back to give this Conqueror CD a second chance, until yesterday, when the new Axis of Advance 10" arrived in the mail, and I thought, "Oh, I should give 'Hammer of Antichrist' a spin." OK, well, I didn't say "Hammer of Antichrist" to myself, for obvious reasons, but I put on this Conqueror CD, and...lo and behold...I was bored and turned it off after 10 minutes.

My review last night would have been similar to that submitted by "Akitsa" for the War Cult Supremacy album--of which this CD is mostly comprised. That is, oppressively brutal, yet boring, too limited in style. It is as if they set out to be the most brutal band on the planet, to play blast beats as often as possible, with so little variation, that they forgot to write interesting parts (I would have said).

Before I describe what changed for me in listening to this album, it is probably best to say what it sounds like, more or less "objectively": constant blast beats; snarled, distorted vocals (not shrieked/screamed/shouted); no audible bass guitar; simple grind riffs; not a lot of variation in tempo; more or less impossible to determine what they might imagine to be the song structure; occasional brief squeals of guitar solos not unlike Napalm Death/Blasphemy; guitar are low in the mix and distorted so as to make riffs discernible [sic] only with difficulty; distortion basically sounds like the brakes on a subway train.

Now, I would have come to my epiphany about this album earlier if only I had asked the obvious question about the mind-numbing, repetitive, non-stop, hook-less black/grind that Conqueror play: "Don't you think they know that?"

There are a lot of bogus reviews on here that try to pass off repetitive music as "hypnotic" or "ritual" or what-have-you...that may very well be the case for Burzum's "Det Som En Gang Var" and the like, but certainly Conqueror are not playing new age trance music! So, on the one hand, we have the obviously aggressive nature of the music, and on the other, the tendency of repetition to become dull and get tuned out. Rather than become a standard grind band, with a constant and predictable shifting between blasts, intros, groove parts, breakdowns, etc., so that the variation is hyper-legible---instead of that, Conqueror, and here is their genius, give only *minimal variation* and *zero release*.

OK, and what does that mean, you may well ask. It means that Conqueror have solved the problem of repetitiveness and invariability in the same way that you would probably go about torturing someone--were you so inclined. Instead of giving you a rest, which naturally any victim would appreciate, Conqueror simply keep your attention by the slightest alterations. *Something* is always happening, it just happens that there aren't a great deal of different somethings, and they tend to cycle in and out, so that an inattentive listen would reveal just one long song. But if you listen (on headphones or in a quiet place, because any white noise tends to bleed into what is essentially a white-noise record) attentively, you'll notice that the band never really settles down--there is a perverse investment of every part with precise invention and unrelenting unpleasantness. If you blink, or are trying to tidy up around the house, with this CD on, you'll miss the very very very tiny modulations that make it worthwhile.

Though I would never say, "Oh, Conqueror--that ONE song" or "that ONE riff", I have to say, the pneumatic bludgeoning they put you through is really something special. Although I certainly wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to undergo it, since it is primarily cerebral.

March into the firestorm of hell, grabbing all available means of your destruction. Execute with mechanical aggression. Deny any and all pleas for mercy with an iron blade of hate. Canada's elite shall guide you to ultimate armageddon for the masses. This is not to be taken lightly. Never before on one disc has there been as much carnage as this, with tracks stripped from out-of-print 'War Cult Supremacy' and demo versions... we won't speak of the demos, as the album's sound dwindles and loses potency in this section of tracks. What is realized immediately is the complete anger and belittlement of any and all forms of polished blackness--it will have Immortal and Marduk clans cowering in the shadowy corner during the length of this attack. It's a blitzkrieg on Christianity like nothing you've heard. Brief, vague attempts at injecting something different into these scores of apocalypse (in the form of crushing, unrecognizable sounds/noises) result in strange additions to the blasting, relentless noise, making the urgent adrenal vibe more intense. Destroy your enemy while looping J. Read and R. Forster's lethal attack into your skull to throw you into blind rage and rejoice.

(from hail-metal.cjb.net)